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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22370248">Inferno</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pavuvu/pseuds/Pavuvu'>Pavuvu</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>A Shadow in the Valley [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Far Cry 5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>2nd Person not Self Insert, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Bad Medicine - Do not attempt, Body Dismorphia, Brainwashing, Canon-Typical Violence, Conditioning, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Dep is not having a good time, Do not repost, Drugs, F/M, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Isolation, M/M, Mind Games, Paralysis, Psychological Torture, Rape/Non-con Elements, Starvation, Suicide, Time Loop, Torture, Tragic Romance, Unreliable Narrator, Wholesome Romance, drug overdose, famlies of choice, rough seas ahead</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-01-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-01-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 12:47:27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>44,729</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22370248</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pavuvu/pseuds/Pavuvu</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Rook has been a junior deputy with Hope County's sheriff's department for four months, has been fighting an insane cult for less than 48 hours and he is dying. He is dying and then he is not. He has died, and then he lives, again and again and again...</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Grace Armstrong &amp; Deputy | Judge, Grace Armstrong / Male Deputy, Male Deputy | Judge &amp; Guns for Hire, Male Deputy | Judge / OFC (Pregame), Male Deputy | Judge/Jacob Seed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>A Shadow in the Valley [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1610344</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>55</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Hope County</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This was a bit of an experimental story for me. The writing style heavily influenced by Starkraving's Weapon of our Time series. I've been wanting to attempt it for years and finally found the right fic for it. </p><p>PLEASE NOTE: This story was originally posted in one giant chapter, after receiving a few reviews, I decided to break it into smaller chapters to ease readability. </p><p>Please Enjoy</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>—————</p><p>
  <strong>Inferno</strong>
</p><p>—————</p><p>
  <em>Do not be afraid; our fate cannot be taken from us; it is a gift.</em>
</p><p>Dante’s Inferno</p><p> </p><p>It started on a Monday. It was almost polite really. Everyone got their weekend in before the world exploded. One last fishing trip, one last trip to the city, the grocery, the kids soccer game.</p><p> </p><p>The last day of normalcy wrapped up in a case of the Mondays. What a fucking way to start a war. </p><p> </p><p>‘What a fucking way to win a war,’ you think to yourself in the second it takes for a cultist to unload a bullet into your brain pan.</p><p> </p><p>But you’re getting ahead of yourself, Deputy Rook. You see, it goes like this.</p><p> </p><p>Monday started early, a blaring alarm clock set four hours earlier than normal, a car packed, a shower missed, a long drive in your future. </p><p> </p><p>Your girlfriend has a flight to catch, the regional airport two hours away and you are, of course, going to drive her. Drive her through the mountains with their white-knuckled switch backs and seemingly endless deer in the predawn darkness. Drive her in the buzzing silence of lost radio stations and gentle hiss of her dozing breath. Don’t begrudge her for it even with a 12 hour shift ahead of you. Don’t begrudge her, your Sara, of inadvertently wasting the last few hours you’ll ever have together. It's not like either of you know.</p><p> </p><p>Pull into the circle of the airport drop off just as the sun breaks the horizon, park the old suv then lean over the center console to kiss her awake. Ignore how the transmission stick shift digs into your gut as you trail kisses from her ear to her mouth, leaving little scrapes against her skin as your days old stubble brushes against her chin. Retreat as she comes to with a happy hum and a soft laugh. Let her brush her hand down the shorn hair above your ear and let her pull you into one last kiss. </p><p> </p><p>"If that’s how you're going to wake me up every time I fall asleep in the car...” she trails off and smiles and brushes your cheekbone with her thumb. And goddamn, if your emotions don’t rise up in your chest all warm and buzzing. </p><p> </p><p>"Usually I don’t like to make promises but I think that’s one I can keep." You grin back.</p><p> </p><p>"I’ll have to hold you to it, once I’m home.” Sara says, reaching down to pull her purse from the wheel well. "You’ll owe me a kiss for every interview question they ask me."</p><p> </p><p>"It’s a deal." You say, then step from the car to pull her luggage from the trunk, the personal suitcase lightly packed but well traveled, the hard plastic exterior overwhelmed with stickers from state and national parks and even a few abroad. </p><p> </p><p>You meet Sara at the curbside, her blond hair falling out of the cheerleader perfect ponytail, eyes sleep bleary, cotton jacket creased. </p><p> </p><p>Her hand settles over yours on the pull handle and she lifts up on her tiptoes and you lean down to kiss her and when  she pulls away her face is serious. "I’m going to get this job, babe, I promise."</p><p> </p><p>"I know." You tell her, because she has set her mind to it, has put in two years of studying and hard work past her grad degree, past her four years of undergrad, and a whole life time of childhood aspirations and learning. "You got this. I know you do."</p><p> </p><p>She nods at you, serious in a way you rarely see her, serious in a way that pulls the skin of her face into fine lines around her mouth and between her eyebrows. "I love you.  So damn much."</p><p> </p><p>"I know," you say again and pull her hand up to your mouth, brushing your lips against her knuckles then the center of her palm. </p><p> </p><p>You watch her leave you, in the dawning light, to go through TSA, then into the skies to California, to a job interview that will hopefully drag the two of you out of nowhere Montana after two long, bland years. </p><p> </p><p>This will be the last you ever see her.</p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>The drive back to Falls End is quiet, long and boring.  Filled with the same hair pin turns as the drive out, though blessed with less deer and altered by a large number of trucks bearing Eden's Gate decals you pass as you travel through the Whitetails. </p><p> </p><p>At the time, you don’t think anything of it.  </p><p> </p><p>You stop at the Grab’n’Go for a carrier of coffee and a breakfast burrito that has no benefit to your carefully devised meal plan aside from tasting like Freshman year and costing under two dollars. </p><p> </p><p>When you arrive at the Sheriff's office you’re surprised to find the parking lot nowhere near empty. All the vehicles are still in their yellow lined stalls, an extra unmarked sedan pulled into the visitor spot. Even a few of the night shifts’ personal vehicles are still parked in back, though they should have clocked out hours ago. </p><p> </p><p>You step from your SUV with a frown, glancing at the four paper cups cradled in cardboard in your hand and sigh. You keycard into a side door, passing Nancy at the dispatch desk, she pulls a cup as you pass, eyes harried as she talks into the headset connecting her with the officers on the ground. </p><p> </p><p>You enter the bullpen, spotting Pratt who had night patrol the day before and should not have been here so late into the day. His swarthy face pressed into the wood of his desk, arms curled around his face to keep out the bright fluorescents. </p><p> </p><p>Joey Hudson looks up from the papers on her desk and pulls a face at you. Waving you over as she cuts her eyes to Staci.</p><p> </p><p>"Well you got here just in time, Big Guy." She says lowly as she takes the coffee you hand her, double cream, no sugar. </p><p> </p><p>"The hell is going on?" You ask quietly, trying to hunker down by her side to better allow for the conspirators tones passing her lips to be heard. </p><p> </p><p>"US Marshall showed up maybe 30 minutes past shift change, he and Whitehorse have been locked in the boss’s office ever since."</p><p> </p><p>"Serving papers?"</p><p> </p><p>"Yeah." She pauses when she hears Staci shift behind you, a flash of guilt crossing her face, then clearing as he groaned himself awake. "Like I said, you got here just in time."</p><p> </p><p>"Just in time for the shit storm you mean." Take out your own mug and ignore Pratt staring holes in your back. "You know who the papers are for? Boshaw?"</p><p> </p><p>"If only." Joey sighed . "It’s the big man himself. Joseph motherfucking Seed."</p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>Pratt had returned to the station an hour before kickoff, just in time to go over the plan the Sheriff and Marshal made and gear up for the descent to madness.</p><p> </p><p>The conference room is crowded, dark and in need of a renovation if the wood panel walls truly were leftovers from the 70s. It did at the very least have a wall mounted TV and a table long enough for a series of maps to be spread over it. </p><p> </p><p>You find yourself leaning over those same maps as the Marshall looks you up and down and smirks like he has your number. Like he thinks that between your too tall height and the weight you carry like a professional gym rat he knows who you fucking are. Like he has read the full measure of you, and can't expect a muscle bound probie like you to actually read the maps or remember the plan or do your fucking job. </p><p> </p><p>Never mind that you graduated with a solid 3.7 GPA at a college that didn't funnel its athletes into fake majors and easy courses. Nevermind that while you are new, Deputy Rook, you’re still experienced enough to know that you should be nowhere near an operation like this. That they should be pulling in guys from Missoula not your dinky sheriff's office to storm a cult that has more members on its property than the official population count of the nearest three counties. Know that you were tapped for this due to the sheer size of you, know that you were tapped as an intimidation tactic. Know this and accept this, and move on from it. You can't pretend that it's anything new. </p><p> </p><p>You leave for the  Eden's Gate compound as soon as the Marshall stops talking. Five lawmen heading for a helicopter as the sun sets in the sky. It is too short a flight to dwell on the fact five people won’t be enough backup for when things go south. </p><p> </p><p>The chopper sets down into a chaos that doesn't feel real. The chopper sets down and Pratt let's you out into a world on fire. The Marshal leading you past Peggies holding guns that will cut through your armored vest like butter, past raving dogs, and flamethrowers, and way too much activity for this late at night.</p><p> </p><p>He leads you right to the church doors, and through them. He leads you right to the front, and when  you place your cuffs against the wrists of one Joseph Seed, it is the Marshal's presence that clasps them, it is his presence that leads your slow walk back to the chopper, it is his presence that kills you.</p><p> </p><p>It just takes you awhile to realize it.</p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>Wake up dead. </p><p> </p><p>Wake up zip tied to a cot that's bolted to the floor. Wake up in time to get threatened  then freed by an old man called Dutch. Learn that over the course of 12 hours that everything you knew about the world has been turned on its head. Learn that despite the civil war that broke out across Hope County, Montana, no help is going to come for you. Learn that somehow  you and your people have been forgotten. </p><p> </p><p>Dutch, you find, is a man who likes to be helpful. He is a man made for leading boy scouts. He loves to direct, and he's willing to praise, and aside from a few tips, he lets you figure your own way. It is both a comfort and endlessly nerve wracking this freedom you find yourself with. </p><p> </p><p>You make it to the top of a radio tower then back to Dutch's bunker in time to see John Seed’s televangelist TV broadcast. Spend the whole commercial  with a rolling stomach and tingling spine. Joey's face on the screen, sending a chill through your body. The sweat under your arms and across your back suddenly an ice bath.</p><p> </p><p>Dutch presses a hand to the meat of your shoulder and pulls you away to an expansive map tapped to the wall, push pins and strings and photos adorn its face. And he traces territories into the rough newsprint. Jacob to the north, John to the west, Faith has the East, and Joseph hides on his tiny island due north of you. </p><p> </p><p>It is not a comfortable place to find yourself, surrounded on all sides. </p><p> </p><p>Leave Dutch’s island after putting two new AA batteries into the emergency power slot of your police radio, strap it to the shoulder harness of your bullet proof vest and settle the wired earpiece against the thin skin of your ear. </p><p> </p><p>Leave with a loaned pistol and a stolen assault rifle strapped to your back. Say goodbye to the last hint of normalcy. </p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>You head west to John’s territory first, the look of terror on Joey's face doing more to force your action than following Dutch’s suggestion to check in with Falls End. You have to cross a river to do so however, and the water is still holding onto the chill of snowmelt even after the warmth of summer. </p><p> </p><p>It is uncomfortable to go swimming fully geared up. You can feel the water filling in the gaps of air in your boots, water logging your socks and clothes  and probably your weapons too. </p><p> </p><p>And isn't that bad for guns? A full drenching? Are they even going to fire after you've struggled your way across this wide fucking river and persistent current?</p><p> </p><p>You pull yourself onto the far bank and just lay there for a moment, catching your breath,  allowing water to drain from your clothing, drip off your skin, and where it has crawled up your neck into the short buzz of your hair. </p><p> </p><p>You wipe your hands over your face, pressing hard against your eyes, until color pops into the blackness and swear.</p><p> </p><p>Swear quietly and diligently and wholeheartedly. Let spew forth your frustration, till you hear a distant shout and splash and push yourself to your feet.</p><p> </p><p>Follow the river bank toward the commotion until you can see a point where the river bank surges out into the water, a natural jut the Peggies have turned into some sort of meeting place. You can see a pulpit and hay bale seating and two ragged cult members holding court around the water. One kneeling in it, hands forcing a person down into the water, as the second reads aloud from a thick white covered tome.</p><p> </p><p>Your hand automatically falls to your sidearm, but the handle is still damp and you've not been able to check the firing mechanism since you got drenched, so you let your hand fall to your side, and you breathe deep, crushing your eyes together once more before sighing out and moving. </p><p> </p><p>You take out the man with the book with a perfect football tackle and finish him with a river rock smashed hard against his temple, the skull giving out with the force of the blow with a wet sounding crack. Then your up and moving. Arm curving round the neck of the other man, pulling him up and off his victim, then bodily over to the side until he is face down in the water. Your knee upon his back, hand at the back of his head shoving down into river water, and pond muck, and whatever green shit is pouring out if those barrels. </p><p> </p><p>You hold him there until he stops moving.</p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>The woman says her name is Kitty Harris, that she was at the apple farm when the cultist rolled in at dawn this morning, that they took the place, and it's people, and that she was so goddamn scared that she was going to die today, so thank you, thank you. </p><p> </p><p>"I mean, well, of course," you say, suddenly tongue tied, because how are you supposed to react when someone thanks you for brutally murdering someone in front of them. "Do you have anywhere safe to go? Somewhere you can hide until this blows over?"</p><p> </p><p>Kitty nods, "Yeah, yeah hon, my brother has a place…." She fusses with her jacket for a moment, stressed and coming down from a burst of adrenaline.</p><p> </p><p> You can see the beginnings of silver in her cherry brown hair, where she hasn't had time to touch up her color, and your heart thinks 'mom' and your soft mouth says, "Can I take you there?"</p><p> </p><p>So you and Kitty walk west, skittering over the highway that leads in towards Falls End and up a path into the woods where a small hunting cabin resides.</p><p> </p><p>"I'll be fine here." She says once she's unlocked the door with a spare key from the key safe bolted by the door.</p><p> </p><p>"Ma'am" you say, stepping back and nodding your head in the way that all law enforcement seem to pick up and turn away. </p><p> </p><p>But she stops you with a call, and that's how you find yourself the recipient of a quart sized ziploc  filled with trail mix and a cherry red sports drink. </p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>You munch your way through the woods, crunching on peanuts and raisins and delicious m&amp;ms, until your radio picks up a transmission, piping the very concerned voice of Rae Rae from Rae Rae's Pumpkin Patch into your ear. </p><p> </p><p>So you head back toward the road to get your bearings. Following the distant rush of motor traffic through the woods until you see pavement and road signs. The first sign you see warns you of deer and the second points towards Falls End, a good 10 miles west of here. </p><p> </p><p>You follow the road, hidden within the forest edge until you hit the apple orchard that sprawls over so much of this part of the countryside. It is here you begin to see the proof to hostile takeover. Scattered piles of spent bullet shells, the odd splatter of blood across budding apples and green leaves . </p><p> </p><p>You stop at the field’s edge and crouch behind a large apple collection bin to check the state of your pistol  and assault rifle. You eject the first round in your pistol but deem the assault rifle fit for use, and vault your way over the wire fence that separates the apples from the pumpkins and your doing your best to sneak your way into the property when you hear gunshots and the crazed barking of a dog, so you give up all pretense of stealth and swing the assault rifle from your shoulder and you rush in. </p><p> </p><p>Let this be a lesson for you Deputy Rook. </p><p> </p><p>A man with an assault rifle is a man with an advantage, but it is not enough of an advantage when you are facing overwhelming odds. </p><p> </p><p>It is you against fifteen Peggie’s, it is you and you have no plan.</p><p> </p><p>You manage to take the farm back by the skin of your teeth. It is bloody, and you are bleeding, and you will feel this. You will feel this for a long time to come, but you will learn from it to. </p><p> </p><p>Learn that you are wholly underprepared for this. Learn that as you tear into a medical kit to stop the bleeding in your side that there have been holes in your training. Realize that you know next to nothing about emergency medical care and the best you can do is douse your wounds in saline and neosporin and strap the split skin down with field dressings and cotton binding. Realize that four months in law enforcement does not make you a superhero. Realize that you have flown too close to the sun.</p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>You free a dog from a cage. He is black and grey and one of his ears is floppy and there are a ton of posters around the county with his doggy face on it, so when you call Boomer, he slinks down out of the truck bed, tail wagging tentatively as he sniffs at your bloodied fingers. </p><p> </p><p>You brush your hand along his back once then allow him some space after the upheaval that was his morning. Boomer follows you as you scour the homestead for Rae Rae then leaves you when you find the woman and her son headshot in the backyard. The dog whines and cries and licks at his owner's hand and it breaks your heart. </p><p> </p><p>You can’t help but turn away and go back into the house, standing lamely in the kitchen until the awkwardness of being alone in a room not your own gets to you and you leave go raid the medicine cabinet. Stuffing your pockets full of ace bandages and tylenol and a clear orange bottle that says Levofloxacin that has like four pills left in it but you figure there may come a time where some antibiotics are better than none. </p><p> </p><p>By the time you reenter the kitchen, Boomer has pushed his way inside through the screen door and whines at you from the linoleum. </p><p> </p><p>You crouch down, babying your wounds, and spread your arms. “Come here boy.” And then you have a fifty pound weight in your lap snuffling at your hair and demanding comfort, and well, no one can blame you for needing some comfort  in return. </p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>You steal a Peggy truck to get to Falls End. Boomer riding shotgun, nose pressed to the cracked window huffing and snuffing air that blows past his face. His bottle brush tail sliding past your arm as it wags wags wags. </p><p> </p><p>It’s mid afternoon, and you can see the white black of Peggy trucks scattered through the town as you drive up. You stop your truck in the farm field that borders the town, and lead Boomer through the bronzing hay. Pausing at the outskirts you pull a pair of tactical binoculars you found in the Peggie truck to do some recon. You are checking rooftops for snipers, and don’t even notice that the dog has wandered away until you catch sight of him trotting through the town. You can hear a distant woof as he passses singular Peggie’s and that is when you realize the dog that inherited you is a genius. </p><p> </p><p>So you sit there in the field watching your dog through the binoculars as he marks targets and points out hidden dangers and you take some time to plan your one man assault against this town. And when Boomer returns to you for an ear rub you are ready to go. Ruffling his fur one last time with a soft “good boy,” you are off. </p><p> </p><p>You sneak into town hitting the lightly guarded flanks, wrapping your hands around necks and jaws and twisting and fuck if that isn’t the worst feeling in the world. The hollow crunch of a broken windpipe underneath your palm. Distantly it occurs to you that it is harder to snap someone's neck than they make it seem in the movies. </p><p> </p><p>You manage to take out five men silently before a cultist surprises you by coming out the door of the hardware store. The woman has time to yell in alarm before Boomer drags her to the ground and snaps her neck. </p><p> </p><p>Swinging the rifle into your hands you start to fire on the cultist swarming into the streets. You pull a grenade from the belt of a downed Peggie and pull the pin, hurling it toward a cluster of enemies and watch it explode in a flash of cordite and body parts.</p><p> </p><p>Townsfolk have heard the commotion and have flown from their hiding spots with weapons in hand and together you manage to roll through most of the towns intruders. Then you hear a far off droning coming ever nearer. </p><p> </p><p>It is an odd sound, one your brain knows, but is struggling to place outside of flashes of memory from old war specials on the history channel. </p><p> </p><p>Then your eyes turn to the sky when you hear someone scream, “Plane!”</p><p> </p><p>And that’s when you realize the noise you’ve been hearing is an engine, and the plane swoops low and straffes you. </p><p> </p><p>You twist and burst into a sprint, it’s the quickest forty yard dash you’ve ever completed, blood burning a cocktail of fear and adrenaline and ‘oh god I don’t want to die’ through your veins. Bullets kick up dirt behind your feet until you can dive behind a concrete wall and huddle there. Air ripping through your lungs in unstable gasps, and you are so fucking close to pissing yourself.</p><p> </p><p>You huddle there, behind that low wall, because what can you fucking do against a plane? You are one man with an assault rifle and a dog. You look up, and you shake and you pray, and when the plane swings around and you hear the drone of the engine bearing down on you once more you can’t help the sob that crosses your lips. And you sit there and you wait to die. </p><p> </p><p>But instead there is a quick rush of air from your left, and a flash of orange light and a man with a bazooka is standing in the doorway of the sporting goods store, and the rocket is flying in the air, and the plane is flying toward the rocket and they collide. They collide in a shower of flame, and hot metal, and falling parts. So when the plane comes skidding down Main Street, settling before the small white church, there is silence and then there is yelling. It is like the whole town comes unhinged for a second, hooting and hollering and crying out to the lord in thanks for their survival. </p><p> </p><p>You sit pressed against your low concrete wall and laugh. </p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>You make your way to the Spread Eagle after one final sweep of the town has been made. Your hand is desperate for a glass of whiskey or a bottle of beer. </p><p> </p><p>Stepping inside you see the familiar dark, wooden interior, empty but for Casey visible through the kitchen window. A slight noise to your left brings your attention to Jerome Jeffries heading toward a stack of boxes descending from the staircase.</p><p> </p><p>“Jesus, it is good to see you Rook.” Mary May says when you pull a heavy wooden crate from her arms, Pastor Jerome leading you to the bar, his own rescued crate in hands. </p><p> </p><p>“Hey Mary May.” You respond,setting the crate on the bar top and letting her pull you into a too tight hug once her hands are free. You squeeze her back just as hard, finding comfort in the gentle openness of Sara’s best friend in Hope County. </p><p> </p><p>Eventually Mary May lets you go, and over bottles of beer and plates of burgers, she and Jerome fill you in on what they’ve managed to learn since Joseph Seed started his Reaping. </p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>You spend the night in Falls End, leading Boomer back to the flat at the edge of town you and Sara had been renting the last two years. Located over a Mom&amp;Pop Grocery, you take a quick peek into the ground floor business before heading around back and digging the spare key out from the flower pot by the door. </p><p> </p><p>As soon as the door opens, Boomer pushes past your legs and scrambles up the narrow staircase.You can hear his nails tapping on the old wooden floors as he races around exploring the space. You step inside and close the door behind you. You check the deadbolt and then check it again and you stand there head tilting down to rest against the cold metal door and breathe.</p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>Morning comes quietly, easily, it is a gentle awakening of a doggy snout pressing a cold nose to your hand. It is a doggy kiss to your palm and a soft whine. It is getting up and having your muscles scream at you. Sore and aggravated and finding you have bled through your bandages and stained the cheap cotton of your sheets. </p><p> </p><p>It is all of those things and worse, as you hobble your way down the steps to let Boomer out to do his morning business. It is the remembrance that your life has gone insane over the course of the last two days and that the people in this town seem to expect you to be the bulwark against that same crazy. </p><p> </p><p>Once Boomer returns you hike back up to your kitchen, putting coffee on to brew and filling up the dog’s makeshift water bowl. You pull eggs and ham from the fridge and scramble them. You slide a fair pile onto a plate for Boomer and eat yours straight from the pan. Metal fork tinging against the cheap nonstick. </p><p> </p><p>You clean up from breakfast, and take a shower and take some time to fieldstrip your guns. Then you pull out the backpack you use on the day hikes with Sara when your off days match up. It is an olive drab affair, light weight, multi pocketed, and stocked with everything your park ranger girlfriend thought you’d need.  </p><p> </p><p>But you take some time to stock it with all the protein bars you have and fill a side pocket with all the useful medical items in your bathroom. Then you fill up your canteen, throw in some electrolyte powder and give it a shake as you and Boomer truck down the stairs. You lock up, tuck the spare key into the zip up pocket of your jacket and head out of town towards the Lamb of God church where radio messages from a Grace Armstrong have been running through your ear for the last five minutes. </p><p> </p><p>You cut through the farm fields at a steady jog, Boomer springing and prancing through the fields around you, scaring up birds like the championship gun dog he is. You slow to a walk when the church is barely in visual range, allowing yourself to catch your breath before charging into battle. </p><p> </p><p>Your hands go through the motions of checking your ammo, and turning off the safety and you don’t even notice the distant crack of a high powered rifle until the bullet has passed through your throat.</p><p> </p><p>You go down hard, and you can’t moan, you can’t cry out, you can’t do much of anything but press your hand to the swelling pain in your neck. Your blood runs hot over your fingers and you can’t breathe. Your lungs are filling with blood with each ragged gasp and you can’t fucking breathe. </p><p> </p><p>Your throat spasms and you cough up a fat wad of blood and phlegm  that settles stickily on your cheekbone. </p><p> </p><p>There is a rustle of plant matter in the space above your head and you hear “Well shit,” before a face enters your vision, greasy haired and forehead marked in ash with the Seeds eight point cross. “I meant to wing you, Sinner. Ah well.”</p><p> </p><p>A boot presses under your chin, Forcing your head back, eyes to the sky. “I won’t leave you to suffer.”</p><p> </p><p>Then a bullet and your brain become acquainted. </p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>You come to on top of the radio tower with Dutch’s voice like gravel in your ear. He says that John has done something, that there is a broadcast you need to see. But you are two busy screaming into your knees to hear. </p><p> </p><p>Dutch has gone silent. Dutch has been silent. Dutch has been silent for longer than you have stopped screaming and eventually your muscles unlock from the tight ball you found yourself in. You push yourself to your knees and wipe at your tear stained face and you sit back against the radio antenna and you wait. You wait for the sun to set and then the sun to rise and then when the hunger in your gut has gotten too strong to ignore, you drop down from the tower and head to the river towards John’s territory. You ignore Dutches voice in your ear, begging you to respond, to know why you dropped off the map for so long, to know what the hell happened.</p><p> </p><p>You cross the river, and head to the baptism point, but Kitty isn’t there, so you head to Rae Rae’s, and when you arrive you find her and her son dead in the backyard and no sign of Boomer but thick tire treads in the mud. </p><p> </p><p>So you walk to Falls End and see the white black of Peggie trucks and you pull your assault rifle from your back, and you walk into town and you catch a bullet in that town, and you die in that town, and you wake up on a radio tower with Dutch’s voice, like gravel in your ear. </p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>You are standing in Dutch’s war room for the second time watching him point out territories with unseeing eyes and muffled ears. He watches you with concern, soft frown marring his tanned face. </p><p> </p><p>“You alright kid?” He asks you when you fail to respond at the right time to the information he’s giving you. “I know, I know it’s been a long day already, you can rest up here if you need to. Head out in the morning?”</p><p> </p><p>You swallow and force a smile that doesn’t quite reach your eyes. “Ah no Dutch, thanks I’m fine. Gotta...gotta get to it right?”</p><p> </p><p>He regards you silently for a few seconds then says with concern lacing his tone. “If you sure.”</p><p> </p><p>You are. So you gather your gear and head to the river and you cross in time to see two men drowning a third person, and the current has pushed you far enough that you can’t sneak up from behind them, so you just rush out of the water, and tackle them both and then it is a mad scramble that leaves you with a blacked eye, and the other two with crooked necks. </p><p> </p><p>For a long time you can’t seem to get your body to move, you just stay frozen atop the corpses, lungs huffing, heart pounding, blood tailing from the split skin at your cheekbone. </p><p> </p><p>It is Kitty who ends up pulling you from your fugue state, offering a hand and a stabilizing point as your pull yourself up, up to your feet. </p><p> </p><p>“Thank you.” You tell her and she smiles at you, drenched but alive and she pats your arm before moving away.</p><p> </p><p>“No, thank you.” </p><p> </p><p>This time, you don’t offer to walk her to her brothers cabin, she just nods at you all jittery and stumbles south east along the river's edge. You turn west and head toward the highway and to Rae Rae’s. </p><p> </p><p>You get to the pumpkin patch too late to save Rae Rae and her boy, but not too late to spring Boomer from puppy jail. </p><p> </p><p>He greets you happily, jumping up and dotting your front with muddy paw prints as he licks the air below your chin, until you lean down and let him clean your face. </p><p> </p><p>“I’m really glad to see you too bud.” You tell him as your hands flow down his back and sides then back to his head where you ruffle those ears. </p><p> </p><p>Greeting complete, he trots away to the back of the house where you see him sniff at the bodies of his owners before you head inside their house. </p><p> </p><p>You steal from the medicine cabinet, then tear apart their kitchen until you find their pet supplies. You fill a drawstring bag with a ziplock full of dog food, a well loved rope toy, and a collapsing silicon travel dog bowl. </p><p> </p><p>Then you steal a Peggie truck and head towards Falls End.</p><p> </p><p>You take the town back, and survive the plane attack and talk to Jerome and Mary May and when it is dark, and the three of you have polished off two bottles of Jack, and endless beers and bar food. You stumble your way to your apartment with Boomer in tow. </p><p> </p><p>You struggle for a time to get the door unlocked, then fall up the stairs after Boomer. You fill him a water bowl and go take a shower and fall into bed.</p><p> </p><p>It feels too large and empty without Sara there sleeping beside you. Too large for a single person. Too large for the insanity that has taken you over.  You lay there alone until Boomer finds you. He looks at the bed, tail wagging slowly, then he places a single foot on the bed, eyeing you like he knows he isn’t supposed to but isn’t going to stop trying until he hears the word No. When you make no move to stop him he sidles the rest of the way up and sprawls out against your side. </p><p> </p><p>You lay there in the dark long after he’s fallen asleep and has entered a foot twitching dream. You lay there in the quiet blackness and you fall apart at the seams. </p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>Morning is another shared egg scramble. You eat, the dog eats, and you hear Grace Armstrong calling for help over a shortwave radio. </p><p> </p><p>You fidget and twitch and you put off making a decision by pulling out your backpack, and filling it with medical supplies, and shelf stable food bars, and you fill your canteen, and choke down a protein shake, and clean your guns and then Boomer is begging you to be let out. So you gear up, and lock up the house, and carefully make your way to the Lamb of God church. </p><p> </p><p>You meet Grace at the top of a church bell tower she has turned into a sniper's perch overlooking a grave yard. </p><p> </p><p>She tells you how the cult has been destroying graves and how her daddy is buried down below and you are arrested by her voice. Calm and deep and even toned almost in spite of the anger that has to be boiling inside her. </p><p> </p><p>So you help her kill cultists and protect the church and then when all attackers are dead she meets you at ground level, where you had been charging between gravestones with AR in hand. </p><p> </p><p>“I appreciate the help.” She says to you her hand stuck out toward yours. “Not many people would have come.”</p><p> </p><p>You shake her hand and her grip is firm and dry. “I’m not most people.” You joke, smiling that smile that others considered ‘boyish’ but in truth was carefully developed after hours of staring into a mirror. </p><p> </p><p>The one your mother made you practice once you hit six feet and kept on stretching. And again in high school when you started to fill out with weights class and football practice. “Your getting too big honey,” your mom told you sophomore year, “too big to go around scowling like you do. You got to smile more, okay? Can you do that for me?”</p><p> </p><p>So you smile big at Grace, all crinkled eyes and white teeth. “I’m just here to serve and protect, y’know?”</p><p> </p><p>She snorts and rolls her eyes. “Yeah I can see that. So your taking down this cult? You want help?”</p><p> </p><p>And that's how you end up with an Olympic level, army trained sniper watching your back.  She follows you overland taking out Peggie patrols, and freeing captives and running errands, and then your radios squeal to life, and Nick Rye is on the line, calling for help regarding his stolen plane. </p><p> </p><p>You look at Grace and she shrugs at you, and together your turn south west and head for the Rye Airfield. </p><p> </p><p>You help Nick  shoot some Peggie’s just as the sun falls beneath the horizon. Then he gives you the details as he waves you inside his personal hanger/garage. </p><p> </p><p>It boils down to this. John Seed (the rat bastard)  stole his plane (the Carmina), threatened Nick’s life and that of his extremely pregnant wife (Hi Kim) and would you please take your policemanning ass up to the Seed Ranch and steal the plane back so he can get his (extremely pregnant) wife out of a Hope County and somewhere safe?</p><p> </p><p>“Jesus Nick!” The aforementioned Kim exclaims from where she stands in the garage doorway. “You can’t just ask them to do that! It’s dark out! No ones had dinner. Come have dinner with us!” </p><p> </p><p>So that’s how you find yourselves hunkered down around the Ryes kitchen table stuffing your faces full of chicken and rice casserole and veggie sticks. </p><p> </p><p>Kim’s calmed down now that her brain isn’t telling her to EAT NOW, and charms Grace and you with dating misadventures from she and Nicks past. </p><p> </p><p>Then once you’ve helped put away dishes and generally clean up, Kim invites you to stay the night, so you lock up the doors, pull the curtains, and settle in to watch a movie. Four new friends, and one cuddle greedy dog, pretending the world isn’t falling apart outside cloth covered glass. </p><p> </p><p>Halfway through the Fellowship of the Ring you find your eyes drifting shut, then your drifting down and you don’t wake up until the smell if bacon is in your nose and you hear the hissing clatter of dog feet on tile. </p><p> </p><p>You push yourself up, groaning at the soreness in your neck and you look blearily around. Grace is in the LaZBoy to your left, wrapped up in blankets but coffee cup in hand. She gives you the wordless grunt of a non morning person and you ease to your feet. You wander to the kitchen and see Nick at the stove top, frying eggs for your dog. </p><p> </p><p>“I’ve got real food for him.” You say because it feels important not to be a complete freeloader. </p><p> </p><p>Nick just grins and shrugs. “But eggs taste better. Don’t they Boomer? Yes they do!” Then he feeds your dog eggs by hand and well there it is you suppose. </p><p> </p><p>“So I'm happy to get your plane back for you and all.” You start out as you pour protein powder into your coffee. “But I don’t know how to fly the damn thing, so I don’t know what good I’d be.”</p><p> </p><p>“Pfft, that’s what I’m here for.” Nick says.</p><p> </p><p>And that’s how Kim finds you, thirty minutes later when breakfast has been eaten, and coffee drunk.</p><p> </p><p>Nick has an airplane control panel mocked up in front of you made out of salt shakers and spice pots.</p><p> </p><p>“So cayenne is the altimeter?” You say hesitantly.</p><p> </p><p>“Right and next to it is...Hi Honey.”</p><p> </p><p>“Nick, Deputy.” Kim says, eyebrows raised. Grace smirks at you from over her shoulder. </p><p> </p><p>“Rook’s fine.” You say as you push yourself to your feet. “You don’t have to… with the Deputy, I mean.”</p><p> </p><p>Kim pats you on the arm as she passes you for the coffee pot. </p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>An hour and a half later Grace rains chaos down upon the Seed ranch. You charge in under her covering fire and fling grenades and bullets into cultists until the mountain top is silent but for distant bird calls and Boomer’s nails on hardwood. </p><p> </p><p>You and Grace spend fifteen minutes turning over every inch of the place looking for important information and you turn up a few maps and a note or two about confessions, and even a voicemail from Joseph, but you find nothing about Deputy Hudson. So you help Grace and Boomer into a cult pickup and send them on their way before going to John’s hanger and seeing about freeing the Carmina.  </p><p> </p><p>Thusly you pull yourself into the seaplane’s yellow cockpit and pull on the headphones and tune into the Rye’s signal. You carefully turn on the engine and ease your way out of the hanger, and then your on the runway, and then you’re in the air and you are flying, you are flying and you are dogfighting and <em>okay okay okay</em>, you are landing.</p><p> </p><p>Landing into Nick’s exuberant hug, and Kim’s stubborn refusal to flee and then you have one more person to add to your team and one more person willing to call themselves your friend. </p><p> </p><p>You wait on the Ryes’ porch with a glass of iced tea at your elbow and Kim's swollen feet on your lap for Grace and your dog to return to you. You sip at your drink and think that this easy sort of friendship is what you’ve been missing these last two years. </p><p> </p><p>You leave the Ryes after a shared lunch. Grace and Boomer leading you towards the pig farm Jerome has asked you to check into. Nick has taken to the air and with Kim’s help is flying over the valley blowing up the Seed’s Bliss silos. You can hear his excited chatter along with the distant buzz of his plane, and feel a softness unravelling within you. </p><p> </p><p>There is a safety in numbers, and for the next three days the Peggies don’t stand a chance. </p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>You are heading alone through the farm fields back toward Falls End when John sends his men after you. His voice floating over airwaves,  high and vicious as he threatens you.  You pull tighter on the gun strapped across your shoulder and start to sprint, but it’s too late. A squadron of armored vehicles run you down in the shorn cornfields. Their mounted guns spitting bullets and a grouping strikes your calf and you go down. You go down with a rush of white in your eyes that drifts away to sparkles. You go down and your muscles go to jelly, nerves refuse to send signals and you’re paralyzed when John’s men collect you from the loam. They heave you up with a grunt and a swear and drag your too long self into the back of a truck and they drive away with you. </p><p> </p><p>The woman riding beside you notices your slowly blinking eyes and she reaches into her pocket and pulls out a handkerchief which she splashes with liquid from a small vial. Then she holds the cloth over your mouth and nose and you breathe yourself into oblivion. </p><p> </p><p>You come to drowning. You come to drowning, with muscles that won’t respond, and black encroaching your vision. You come to dying, and when you are finally pulled from the water you don’t have enough strength left in you to find your feet let alone struggle away from the brawny cult member who had just been suffocating you in Bliss infused water.</p><p> </p><p>You feel the oily residue left behind by the component as the water drips from your face. Everything is soft and gentle as a firm hand pushes your shoulder towards the riverbank. You stumble forward on jelly knees until a hand planted in the center of your chest stops you. Your eyes follow it to a short man, with dark hair and a well kept beard and then that same hand is around your throat and you are being forced back and down and you are drowning again. Drowning and choking on the hand tight around your throat until you aren’t any more. Pulled up into the air where you wheeze for breath. </p><p> </p><p>You hear voices, and you see figures but you’re too Blissed up to really make sense of it. Too Blissed up and too close to dead as you cough up water and your nose leaks liquified snot down your lips and chin and…</p><p> </p><p>Joseph’s hands are on your shoulders, running up your neck and into the short hair at the sides of your head. He tips your face to look at his, and he says something you don’t catch, and he is gone. He is gone and you are dragged into the back of a van with two other townsfolk and a Peggie guard. </p><p> </p><p>You ride with them and listen to their conversations and then with a skull shattering crash you are flying, tumbling through the air, body crashing against roll bars and bench seats, until the wreck comes to a halt, and even through the Bliss you can feel the whine of your bones and the cry of your muscles, the solid protests in your ligaments. </p><p> </p><p>The Van's swing doors heave open and in the blinding backdrop of a headlight is Pastor Jerome. An avenging angel in his preacher white collar and bullet proof vest. He holds a Bible in one hand and a shotgun in the other, and like a painting of a John Brown he calls you to arms. Jerome reaches for you and you reach back and he draws you to your unsteady feet and presses a pistol into your hand and sends you forward with a single directive. </p><p> </p><p> Go forward and realize how easy it is to lose yourself under a growing curtain of anger. Become like a warning in a biblical tale, wrap myth upon your reality, embody relentlessness  as you press forth and forth again.  Send wrath packed in bullets, vengeance in the unforgiving snap of bone, find clarity in each slide of knife through skin. </p><p> </p><p> Find yourself boosted and bolstered by  each member of the Resistance you free and find you are not tempered by Eden's blood. </p><p> </p><p>In this night you are the endless ebb and flow of the tide, leading the fight against mortar fire and bottlenecked bridges, you are relentless and heartless as the blackest sea.</p><p> </p><p>Until finally you find your quarry and saw a knife between the rope bound hands of Merle Briggs, who you met once at a routine traffic stop not a week into your job as deputy. </p><p> </p><p>You don't remember what you say as you pass him Jerome's loaned pistol and take your knife to the forest, but he nods after you as you walk away.</p><p> </p><p> Find that coming down off a high dose of Bliss makes you vicious, Deputy Rook. Enter the forest and don't think about how easy all this killing had become over the last fourteen days (and two lives). How easy it is under the slow tingle of sugar scented drugs. </p><p> </p><p>Acknowledge distantly that this should concern you. Let that thought simmer, and you plunge your blade into the jugular of a white sweatered man. Contemplate it, as his blood pools at your feet, wetting your boots in creeping red. Contemplate it and don't notice the Peggie sneaking up behind you until you have caught a shotgun blast in your vest. Lose your breath as it is punched out of you with buckshot and convulsing ribs.  Stumble forward then lunge to avoid the second barrel exploding. Lunge for the enemy and wrestle the gun from their hands and beat them bloody with it. </p><p> </p><p>Stand in the chaos of the night and head back back to Merle, where you can hear the <em>whomp whomp whomp</em> of helicopter blades. Ignore the spreading wetness on your back, and the fire in your spine as you climb aboard the dropship and pour yourself into a plastic seat.</p><p> </p><p>Peel away your ruined Deputy tac-vest and drop it to the floor by your feet. Lean into the sudden press of hand against your back and the fearful southern twang in your ear and  just...let it fall away for a while. </p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>The room is lit by darkness and a table lamp, and is entirely unknown to you. You lay there, on your stomach in a too small cot and listen to the distant thump of music, feel the vibrations crawl up the old wood floor to your fingers resting lightly on top of it. Blink slowly, and try for little else. Your eyelids sink down like cold molasses and you sleep.</p><p> </p><p>Sleep until there is a hand at your neck and a familiar voice in your ear and groan out against the unfairness of it all. </p><p> </p><p>It is a familiar hand, though not one that has touched you so intimately before. Running from your neck down your spine. Fingers light and fleeting as they pull back bandages and prod around broken, swollen skin. </p><p> </p><p>"Mary May?" You slur into a room you can only kind of see. One that is blurred by a haze of opiates and poor lighting.  </p><p> </p><p>The blond woman shushes you with a brush against your cheekbone. "You’re alright, just go back to sleep, we've got you."</p><p> </p><p>"W'hap'n?"</p><p> </p><p>“You got shot, Rook.”</p><p> </p><p>“Oh…’m I okay?”</p><p> </p><p>Her hand comes back to your head and gently presses down. “You’re gonna be fine, go back to sleep, Rook.”</p><p> </p><p>You adjust your cheek against the pillow and listen to her.</p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>Falls End becomes your permanent address for a week and some change. After the first three days they pull you off the opiates and feed you Tylenol by the hand full.</p><p> </p><p>“We don’t have a real Doc.” Jerome tells you remorsefully as he helps steady your shaky legs down the narrow staircase that leads to the Spread Eagle’s main room. “Best we could do was dig out what pellets we could and patch you up long enough to stop the bleeding.”</p><p> </p><p>He lands you gently onto a barstool and pulls up one beside you. His hand never leaving its firm grasp on your elbow like he’s afraid you’ll slide from the stool like warm putty or disappear into the ether if he lets you out of his sight. </p><p> </p><p>“There were nine,” Mary May says, her eyes down in the scratched hardwood counter. “That I could get to. Holes for two more we couldn’t.”</p><p> </p><p>She looks up at you and her wheat colored eyes are swimming. “If you let these Peggie fucks kill you, I won’t go to your funeral.”</p><p> </p><p>You reach across the table and take her hand in yours. You can feel the bartender’s callus between her thumb and pointer finger as you squeeze her hand in yours gently. “But M, if you don’t go, who's going to help Sara fight off all the lecherous scumbags who are looking to sully her virtuous name while she is in the throes of grief?”</p><p> </p><p>You school your face into one of earnest begging and you beseech her with it until she snorts with laughter.</p><p> </p><p>“You’re so stupid.” She wipes her free hand across her face. “Stop watching those stupid Jane Austen films, it’s a bad look for you.” </p><p> </p><p>Sighing dramatically, you swoon back into your chair, persuasively enough that Jerome makes a frantic lunge to keep you stable. You stare up into the fading shock in his eye and grin.</p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>Boomer and Grace drag you back into the real world after about 10 days of convalescence, when the muscles in your back no longer protest the slightest of twists, and you can move with some semblance of normalcy.</p><p> </p><p>You gear up, strapping on a new bullet proof vest repurposed from a Peggie who died in an altercation between a moving vehicle and a moose. </p><p> </p><p>Things have been quiet in Holland Valley ever since your failed baptism, so you jump into an appropriated Peggie truck, and zip down the highway towards Dutch’s Island.</p><p> </p><p>“Look, all I’m saying is goin’ into the Whitetails and taking on Jacob is a fool's errand.” Grace counters. </p><p> </p><p>“Maybe, but if we take him out then we take out the Seed’s army. Two birds, one stone.” </p><p> </p><p>She turns in her seat and stares you down, face blank and judging. </p><p> </p><p>You heave out a put-upon sigh and turn the truck so that you cross the east leading bridge into the Henbane. </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>You die taking back the prison, Earl Whitehorse staring down at you with tear filled eyes and an expression that is indescribable in its grief. </p><p> </p><p>It’s your seventh life that you realize Boomer no longer goes to grieve his family when you rescue him from the  bear cage. He just greets you with frenzied joy and sticks to your side like a burr. Like he’s scared you’re going to disappear on him <strike>again</strike>.</p><p> </p><p>It is the eighth when you stop pairing Grace and Nick in your squad. Aside from the first time they meet (occasionally stretched to the first day if you arrive at the Rye airfield close enough to dinner) they bicker with each other over the radio with a manic sort of spite. Their back and forth wears out its welcome overtime.</p><p> </p><p>On the ninth, you bypass Henbane and only dip into the Valley long enough to get your dog. You head into the Whitetails and you finally meet Jacob Seed. The less said about that the better.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
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<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Holland Valley</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Originally posted as 1 chapter, later split to help readability.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>You make it to the top of a radio tower then back to Dutch’s bunker in time to see John Seed’s televangelist TV broadcast. Spend the whole commercial amazed by the fact that John's coat looks like a Dooney&amp;Bourke purse. Find yourself imagining a handbag of brown with tiny planes slung over Sara's elbow. Spend the next fifteen minutes as Dutch leads you through the territories the Seed siblings have taken, hating yourself, because you haven't thought of Sara in a long long time. </p><p> </p><p>Make your way across the river and save Kitty Harris, let her wander as she will once you’ve killed two men for her sake and she has thanked your for it. Ignore that this has become your new normal. </p><p> </p><p>Save your dog. Collect the spoils from Rae Rae’s house and head across the highway to the apple farm. No longer feel the need to rush to a Falls End. The town is an anchor point in this purgatory you have found yourself in and will last without harm until you choose to arrive. </p><p> </p><p>Eradicate Peggie’s. End them with prejudice and copper lined bullets. Radio into Dutch that the Peggies have been ousted and slice apart apples for you and Boomer to eat as you wait for Resistance forces to arrive. </p><p> </p><p>Eat another apple as you watch the Montanans set up a perimeter and stuff your bag with Snickers bars and beef jerky and a jar of apple butter from the farm stand once they’ve finished. </p><p> </p><p>Twelve lives in, and you have learned to eat constantly to keep from dropping weight. Take it upon yourself to spite biology and keep the body that four years of college football and professional weight coaches built, and you maintained through hard work and careful meal planning for two years after. </p><p> </p><p>Know in a distant kind of way that doing so is ridiculous and wasteful, but also understand that maintaining your muscle mass is the only thing you have control over anymore. </p><p> </p><p>Leave the apple farm and make your slow meandering way towards Falls End. Kill Peggies and raid bunkers and collect comics and lighters and bobbleheads. Do these things because you can  and because at some point someone will ask, has asked, or will be asked. </p><p> </p><p>Take a week to reach Falls End and take back the town under siege with seven sticks of dynamite and a light machine gun. </p><p> </p><p>Rest for a night in your own home, take a shower, change into clothes that actually fit you and weren’t scavenged out of someone else’s closet. Ransack your apartment for anything useful and fall asleep with Boomer against your legs. Wake up in the morning to Grace calling out over the radio and head to the church to team up with her. Accept that some events don’t proceed without you. </p><p> </p><p>Wander across Holland Valley stirring up trouble until John’s voice rings static’s from your radio. He always sounds sort of odd to you. Kind of high pitched and grating even as he threatens you. </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“...but... it will be worth it. My people will come for you.” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>You sigh and check your watch and say. “Grace, keep an eye on Boomer for me.” </p><p> </p><p>Because sometimes it’s better to just let these things play out and John for all his madness, is a Seed sibling who has never actually killed you.</p><p> </p><p>You don’t make your capture easy of course, sometimes it’s just the principle of the thing.</p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>John is drowning you because that is what he does. John the Drowner, not John the Baptist, would be a more fitting name, your asphyxiated brain supplies when you are finally pulled into the air by Joseph’s firm voice. </p><p> </p><p>This time your ears are too waterlogged to hear their conversation but you can fill in the blanks. </p><p> </p><p><em>‘You have to love them, John.’ </em>Joseph says every time, and it has become mocking in repetition.</p><p> </p><p>You glare as the Eden’s Gate members shove you into a van to go to a confession that will never take place. Burn their faces into your retinas and wait for the Bliss to wear off and for the rage that comes behind it. </p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>Find yourself on the Henbane/Whitetail border with Grace at your side when the worst happens. A Faith apparition comes into being between one step and the next. You walk face first into her, into the Bliss. The pollen coats your tongue, your lungs, your fucking existence, and you go down hard. </p><p> </p><p>You go down hard in front of a squadron of Jacob’s hunters, and a Bliss daydream. You go down hard and the grenade in your hand goes down with you. </p><p> </p><p>Be torn apart by your own friendly fire, feel the shrapnel as it pierces through to your veins. Bleed out, and watch as Grace bleeds out beside you. </p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>You have lived thirteen lives and twelve deaths, and you are tired Deputy Rook.</p><p> </p><p>You are tired as you reclaim Rae Rae's and the Apple Orchard. Tired as you take back Falls End and clean up the aftermath. Tired as you drink booze and eat your way through another meeting with Jerome and Mary May where they list the same three complaints they need you to look into. </p><p> </p><p>You have raided the pig farm, and stolen back the Widowmaker enough times that even the perverse joy that comes from driving a weaponized big rig has left you. </p><p> </p><p>You drop forty bloodstained dollars on the bartop and reach behind the counter for an unopened bottle of whiskey. You crack it as you leave the Eagle, sipping your walk-me-down as Boomer leads you through the streets to your apartment. Sit in your bed and get thoroughly hammered as you wait for Grace to call out over the radio around mid morning the next day. </p><p> </p><p>Find yourself waiting, and waiting, until a heavy weight sinks itself into your gut because the call never comes. </p><p> </p><p>You and Boomer head to the Lamb of God church when the waiting has become too much and the anxiety is crawling like ants through your skin. </p><p> </p><p>Find the church empty, find the graves desecrated, find no sign of Grace. No spent shells, or bullet holes, no splash of blood, or black tire tread. Stand on the cracked cement walkway and stare at the peeling paint of the church doors. Raise your hand to the call button on your walky talky, press it down and hear the sudden quiet as it works to pick up your words. </p><p> </p><p>Work your jaw futilely, try to force your vocal cords to action.</p><p> </p><p>Say nothing. Release the transponder and walk away. </p><p> </p><p>Head to the Rye’s house, accept a mission given by Nick and a sandwich from a Kim. Eat it as you walk up mountains towards the Seed Ranch. </p><p> </p><p>Return to your apartment late that evening, after dropping off the Carmina and having a celebratory Peggie killing at the airfield afterwards. Drop your muddied clothes onto the floor outside your shower. Turn on the water, scrunch yourself down so you can get your head under the spray, and let the anxiety and fear that has been growing in you all day to come tearing out. </p><p> </p><p>Cry in the protected solitude of your home, feel worse for it. </p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>A pounding at your door wakes you the following morning, early enough that the sun is barely breaking through your drapes, and Boomer hasn’t woken you for his morning business. </p><p> </p><p>Trip over yourself as you head to the door, pistol in hand, swear quietly as you unlatch the deadbolt and crack it open. Freeze, fumble your gun and pull the door open wide. </p><p> </p><p>“Grace.” You choke out, heart thundering inside your chest. </p><p> </p><p>You can tell she tried to school her features before you opened the door, but as soon as she hears your pained gasp it breaks. She grins and reaches for you, relief oozing from her pores, from her frame. Her hands settle on your shoulders as she chokes out your name then pulls you close, gripping you tight. </p><p> </p><p>Raise your free hand to cradle her skull, fingers getting lost in the textured hair of her ponytail. "It's so damn good to see you.”</p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>The two of you are seated on your crappy furniture, thrice used before you got a hold of it with beers in hand. Despite the early hour, alcohol seemed to be the only reasonable choice. </p><p> </p><p>“I woke up,” Grace was saying, “I was up hidden in the church steeple waiting for Peggies. I just woke up there. Remembering how I died...how we died. I couldn’t…”</p><p> </p><p>She makes a frustrated noise and raises the bottle to her lips. </p><p> </p><p>“I always wake up on Dutch’s island.” You offer once it’s obvious she’s in no mood to continue. “Same place, same moment, every time.”</p><p> </p><p>“Every time.” She says. It’s not a question.</p><p> </p><p>You nod and sigh and slouch back into the loveseat. “This is lucky thirteen for me.”</p><p> </p><p>“Jesus.” She rubs at her face, streaking the black greasepaint under her eyes. “That fucking explains things at least. Some of them,” She waved her hand, in the way that became normal when talking about your anti-Seed squad as a whole,”thought you were some sort of all knowing terminator.” </p><p> </p><p>You snort into your beer. “Sharky and Hurk?”</p><p> </p><p>Grace nods. “Nick too.”</p><p> </p><p>“I wish that were the case.” You say in commiseration, “maybe I’d actually manage to take out one of those fuckers.”</p><p> </p><p>“Never?”</p><p> </p><p>You shake your head. “There’s just too many of them. I have to split my attention between all three territories just to keep up…all it takes is one Peggie getting lucky.”</p><p> </p><p>She reaches for your hand and squeezes. “We’re going to make it this time.”</p><p> </p><p>You wish you had the same conviction. </p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>It’s easier with Grace. The old two heads instead of one adage. You clean up the Valley and escape John’s numerous hunting parties through sheer grit and Armstrong defiance. You act more like an insurgence, pulling on Grace’s experience in the Middle East, forever moving, darting between territories before the Seeds can catch up to you. </p><p> </p><p>It works better than you expected. You’ve avoided Jacob’s trial this time around and John’s baptism. You saw hide nor hair of Joseph when you snuck onto his island in the dead of night and set up a sniper's perch to watch the compound. </p><p> </p><p>The two of you, laying in the darkness on makeshift hunting blinds, covered by camouflage netting and homemade ghillie suits. You wait for three days, talking to each other through radio clicks and trading sleep shifts before finally giving it up as a bad job. </p><p> </p><p>She clicks the radio at you in a specific pattern and you pack up, scaling down your tree into the quiet darkness, dodging past patrolling Chosen until you reconvene at a distant boat dock and steal a pontoon to take you back to the Valley. </p><p> </p><p>Hunker down in the first bunker you find and pull off your ghillie suit with a sigh.</p><p> </p><p>“That could have gone better.” You mutter as you scratch at a line of mosquito bites going up your arm and praying the first hard frost of the year would arrive already (it’ll be three more days, you know this).</p><p> </p><p>‘It is what it is.” Grace grouses as she works a series of twigs out of her hair. “Would have been nice if we could have taken Joseph out on his home turf…stopped this whole war then and there.” she tosses the wood into a waste basket, “I’m taking first shower.” </p><p> </p><p>You grunt in acknowledgement and raid the bunker’s pantry. You cook canned beef stew over a camp stove while munching your way through a pack of crackers. You have a mason jar of moonshine (a bunker staple) on the card table along with another sleeve of crackers and plastic bowls. </p><p> </p><p>You take the stew off the burner when you hear the shower cut out. You divide it between the two of you and wait for her to settle across from you before eating. </p><p> </p><p>You talk of plans and possibilities trading the glass jar of liquor back and forth as you talk. You’re feeling nice and lubricated by the time you push yourself to your feet and make way for the shower. The water is only lukewarm and the pressure weak, but it hardly matters in the exchange for scrubbing three days of sweat, bugs, and mud off you. </p><p> </p><p>You exit in a pair of sweatpants and scavenged T-shirt that just barely fits, your feet stuffed into your boots, because these bunkers are never carpeted and the concrete floors give off enough of a chill to freeze the skin off your toes. </p><p> </p><p>Grace has poured herself into the single bed, half empty jar of shine in her hand, which she holds out to you as you pass her by. </p><p> </p><p>You reach for it and tug gently, to let her know you have a good hold, but she keeps it firmly in her grasp. Her dark eyes on you, staring at you with an intent that doesn't translate to her face. Her free hand reaches up for your chin, short by inches but her directive clear. You lean down into her palm, letting her press the rounded glass lip to your mouth and drink. </p><p> </p><p>The liquor is a burn flavored with wild mint. Fragments of the leaves filter through your teeth and you rub them away with your tongue. </p><p> </p><p>Grace places the jar on a bedside table then pulls you down. Her mouth on yours, her hands pushing on your shoulders until you sink down, and kneel before her. Even then you are nearly eye level with her seated form and perfectly posed for her.</p><p> </p><p>You kiss and nip and lick your way into each other’s mouths, never a fight for dominance but a partnership of give and take, one worked out long before this moment and better for it. </p><p> </p><p>You crowd onto the too small cot, bracketing her with your arms as she cradles you between her legs. Hands finding themselves under her over large nightshirt, you play with her nipples until she gasps. </p><p> </p><p>She is the one to shuck her panties, shirt rucked up and riding high, one breast exposed to the air, the other hidden under printed cotton. You latch on to her nipple with your mouth, sucking and teasing, as your fingers find the core of her.  Easing past slick folds you work gently at her clit until she crying for you, her short nails scratching at your back, pulling reams into your shirt. </p><p> </p><p>You carry her through her orgasm and over it, until she pushes at your arm with her knee. </p><p> </p><p>“I want you.” Grace says, and who are you to argue such a blatantly stated fact. </p><p> </p><p>You ease back to better shuck your sweatpants, but her hands meet yours at the elastic waist  and she reaches in and draws you out, already hard for her. </p><p> </p><p>You moan into her shoulder as she runs her hand down your length. Working at you until her hand comes away sticky with precum. She lines you up and wraps her legs around your hips and you slide in easy. She is warm and tight and you lose yourself in her body, in her gasps, and in the way her low voice calls your name as she peaks. </p><p> </p><p>You fall asleep with her on that too small bed and you don’t regret it. </p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>Wake up the next morning hungover but horny, with Grace’s ass pressed against your swelling dick. Kiss at the back of her neck and grind gently against her to make your desire known. </p><p> </p><p>She groans awake feeling her liquor but adjusts her legs so you can slide into her from behind. “Should have known better than to shack up with a younger man.” She groans, then moans,and it looks like she’s invested in this part now too. </p><p> </p><p>It takes you a long while to leave that bunker. Little distractions keep popping up, like seeing if you can both fit in the shower (you can, so long as you don’t want to get clean), or that work bench that’s just the right height, and a number of other small details that are just so much more interesting than fighting a cult. </p><p> </p><p>But you can’t hide away from the world, and eventually the pair of you wander out into the night, sated and happy, and ready for whatever is thrown at you next. </p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>John is losing it on the radio. You have taken all of his bases, destroyed all of his Bliss silos, his tank, his giant ‘YES’.  He is raining hellfire upon you over the airwaves. Unhinged and furious with it. </p><p> </p><p>“<em>You will repent, Deputy!”</em> His voice comes out loud from your earpiece, you wince and tug it free, <em>“You will confess! You will cry out your sins——!”</em></p><p> </p><p>You catch Grace’s eye and make a ‘blah blah blah’ motion with your hand. She snorts lightly and smacks your shoulder. </p><p> </p><p>“We best be gettin’ out of John’s territory then. Since he plans on making you <em>cry.</em>” She says, adjusting her rifle in her arms. </p><p> </p><p>“Let’s.” You agree, grinning at her joke. After two lives she has gotten better at them, no longer poking awkward fun at your driving. </p><p> </p><p>The Henbane River is maybe three miles west of your current position, if you travel straight through the woods and don’t mind a sheer drop. So you give a sharp whistle for your dog and continue your trek, confident and calm this deep into the woods where it feels like no one can get you. </p><p> </p><p>The hike up the mountain side makes your calves burn, and always takes longer than you expect. The lactic acids burning through your muscles demanding short breaks more frequently than over flat land.</p><p> </p><p>You have just pulled yourself up a rock ledge and have reached down to assist Grace when a bullet slams into the rock face by your arm and sends granite shrapnel flying through the air. Rock chips bite into your arm just as Grace grabs hold and you heave her up as the pain hits. </p><p> </p><p>You hiss through your teeth and stumble back from the ledge, as she brings her scope to her eye and peers in the direction of the shot. </p><p> </p><p>“No visual.” She bites out, “let's move.”</p><p> </p><p>The two of you run up the final few yards to the peak out the mountain and as you crest your boots slide into something slick, sending your sprawling, knee striking the ground and sending a bolt of pain up your nerves. </p><p> </p><p>You look down to where your hand had braced itself in the grass by your knee and see red. Red that leads a jerky path to the body of your dog, filled with arrows, lying still. </p><p> </p><p>“Boomer!” You cry just as Grace yells,</p><p> </p><p>“We have to move!” And she shoves at you so that you are tripping down the mountain, sprinting down the mountain, shooting bullets down the mountain, at the veritable army of Peggies who surge up.</p><p> </p><p>Up, up ,up, until you are clashing, face to face.</p><p> </p><p>It gets ugly quick. They try to overpower you, bog you down with limb and Bliss, get too close for you to do violence with guns, and rely instead on broke knuckle fists. </p><p> </p><p>Grab and wrestle and stab, for as long as you can, for as long as their numbers will allow. </p><p> </p><p>You have lost sight of Grace in the chaos, but you can hear the retort of her assault rifle, letting you know that she at least has fallen back enough to make use of her weapon and isn’t in this snake pit of snarling limbs. </p><p> </p><p>Elbow a sweatered man from where  he is trying to pin your arm, falter on the follow through when you hear the odd staccato of an uzi, freeze when you hear a wet gasp and a body fall to the ground. Turn</p><p> </p><p>and see</p><p> </p><p>Grace, on the ground, hand pressed tight to her neck, mouth gaping, gasping fishlike. See</p><p> </p><p>the blood. Swelling through her fingertips, out of her mouth, out of holes in her bullet proof vest. </p><p> </p><p>Scream for her, scream that ragged wounded sound of a dying elk. Struggle against the onslaught of hands that pull you down, that try to wrap rope around your limbs, shove a rag full of Bliss in your face. Struggle until you have gasped down heaving lungfuls of the sugar sweet drug, struggle until you get some breathing room, until you can burn, match quick, through the drug in your system and you become mad with it.</p><p> </p><p>Lunge teeth first at the woman in front of you, bite down hard into the throat just above her clavicle and tear until you bring something with you. Wrap your hands around the neck of the man on your left and twist twist twist until something snaps like the top of a bottle of soda. Pull a knife from a corpse’s pocket and eviscerate the remainder. Shrug off knife wounds, and bullet holes, and a dislocated shoulder. </p><p> </p><p>Mind nothing, know nothing, until you are alone inside field of corpses. Until you walk over saturated earth, and kneel beside your Grace. Until you fall beside your Grace, hands shaking and harsh with it as you reach for her pulse, as you don’t feel her pulse. As you don’t</p><p> </p><p>feel</p><p> </p><p>anything.</p><p> </p><p>The soul has left the body. Hers. Yours. It doesn’t matter. You are five feet away watching yourself watch Grace. You are ten feet away, ghosting. </p><p> </p><p>The body moves, collapsing over the corpse, raining kisses down upon a clean forehead and fear stained cheeks. The body sobs, the ghost abstains. The ghost waits, the ghost thinks, The ghost returns, sliding into skin, twitching fingers, moving muscles. The body responds, hand falling, hand grasping, hand lifting until </p><p> </p><p>you press a gun to your mouth and eat your own bullet. </p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>It is your fourteenth life and Grace Armstrong doesn’t recognize you.</p><p> </p><p>It hits like a fist to the gut, car crash hard, total devastation, no survivors. A cold shock to the system, that starts gentle, a little inkling of unease that filters its way into your awareness when you hear her voice over the shortwave. The same cry for help as always, word for word, cadence fitting into your memory perfectly, tone pitch perfect. </p><p> </p><p>Then settles like a rogue wave, bowls you over, sends you into turbulent waters, when she jumps down from the sniper's perch after the Peggies have been killed, the graveyard defended. She thrusts her hand out at you, and says “I appreciate the help. Not many people would have come.”</p><p> </p><p>Then stares at your frozen face, a rictus of horror, as you unclench your jaw and choke out. “Yeah anytime.”</p><p> </p><p>She talks over the rush of blood in your ears, the creeping cold in your body, the hands that have gone static numb around the stock of your gun. She offers her help, and you nod, and you leave, and you walk</p><p>A</p><p>W</p><p>A</p><p>Y.</p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>You don't call her back. Work around the memory of her, of when she was yours, and ignore her now when she isn't. It hurts less that way. It hurts less. <em>It hurts.</em></p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>You make it to the top of a radio tower then back to Dutch’s bunker in time to see …</p><p> </p><p>You make it to the top of a radio tower then back to Dutch’s...</p><p> </p><p>You make it to the top…</p><p> </p><p>You make it...</p><p> </p><p>You…</p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>Go after John Seed.</p><p> </p><p>Ignore Faith, ignore Jacob, and Joseph. Go after John Seed. Go after him and after him and after him until you have his undivided attention. Until he snatches you from the woods and brings you to his bunker. Finally. </p><p> </p><p>Lay eyes on Joey Hudson for the first time in what seems like years. Watch her scream behind her gag and cry, and hate John with every iota of your body. Loathe him so entirely for everything he has done, and hasn't done, for what he’s made you do in return. Feel so swollen with rage that when he finally stops his crowing and parading you have no clue what he’s said. </p><p> </p><p>Stare at him as Joey sobs, dead eyed and hateful. Settle on asking, “So, are you going to <em>get on with it </em>then?”</p><p> </p><p>Ask him and watch as his face lights up and he grins at you all proud and pleased. “Yes. Yes I shall.” </p><p> </p><p>And then wheels Joey out of the room while crying about privacy and confessions and goddamn but you hate him. Have hated him from the first time you saw his smug face on the television, and seeing him now, this personal interaction has done nothing to lessen that. </p><p> </p><p>Strain against your bindings, put those muscles to work, loosen the restraints around your legs enough to move your foot. Use that newfound mobility to shove your chair towards a stairwell, then down that stairwell. </p><p> </p><p>Slaughter your way through the bunker, through Peggies and Angels and Bliss exposure, through insurmountable odds. Because that is what you do now, Deputy Rook. You find a way past bullet wounds, and dogbites, past a concussion that’s stealing your balance but isn’t upsetting your rage.</p><p> </p><p>Hunt John until you are nearly face to face with him, separated like an animal at a zoo by thick concrete and plexiglass. Snarl and howl and throw words at him as he speaks to you through an intercom. Promise retribution. Burn it into your soul, mark his life down in your ledger and get to it. </p><p> </p><p>Leave John’s Gate hemorrhaging spite. Teeth spitting acid, you turn north and then east and you collect</p><p> </p><p>Everyone. </p><p> </p><p>Wage war. Wage war and turn the Valley over. Claim it inch by inch until John is slobbering for you, messy and wet over the airwaves. Fire and brimstone in his thirst for you that makes Joseph plead caution over The Ranch’s voicemail.  In a way that causes Sharky to crack lewd jokes to make up for the uncomfortable desperation in John’s voice. </p><p> </p><p>The youngest Seed is desperate like a lover. Desperate in how much he wants you, desperate to feel your intestine in his hands, and to anoint your grave in blood. There is an interesting dichotomy between lust and rage.</p><p> </p><p>He catches up to you eventually.  Since he failed to keep you on his own terms, he brings the fight to you. Makes it personal, makes it <em>messy</em>.</p><p> </p><p>John lays siege to Falls End. He takes captive its people and then he calls for you. </p><p> </p><p>He thinks he’s ready for you, has you cornered, weak, separated from your friends, your animals, your support.</p><p> </p><p>He’s wrong.</p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>The town is barren when you sneak into it, barren, and quiet, and swelling with that empty house anticipation. Vacant and waiting.</p><p> </p><p>You walk down mainstreet, with a tactical shotgun in your arms. You aren't here to play. You aren't here for the quiet takedown. You want this loud. You want this so loud that God will hear it. You want them to know you’re not fucking around anymore.</p><p> </p><p>You follow the street, to where John has laid out the red carpet. Find that he’s lined the door to Jerome’s church with crows. Just nailed them up there, around the door like a fucking psycho. </p><p> </p><p>Pull the pin on a smoke grenade and chuck it through the door as you enter, slamming past black feathers, and into startled Peggies. Catch two with a shotgun blast, and as you turn, smash face first into the butt stock of another. Take it high on the forehead, between your eyebrows, take it with enough force to split skin, to cause a waterfall of blood from your nose. Drop hard to the ground, a pull cord light knocking out our sight.</p><p> </p><p>Wake up to pain, wake up to a buzzing knife under your clavicle, and tight hands holding you down. Someone’s knees upon your wrists, cutting off blood and movement, pressing you hard hard hard into the floor. Struggle before your eyes have stopped greying out, twist your hips until the weight pressing you down unsettles, and the body on top of you leans even more down into your space. One hand grabbing your chin tight, vice-like fingers pulling at the skin under your lip, baring your teeth in a grimace. </p><p> </p><p>“Stop moving.” John Seed says, kneeing you in the side as he keeps the tattoo gun in his free hand raised. “I’m not <em>done yet.” </em></p><p> </p><p>Struggle against the hands holding you, against John's weight on your hips. Snarl and curse, until his hand on your chin slams you back, head colliding hard with the wooden floor. </p><p> </p><p>Find yourself dazed and nauseous as he pats your cheek condescendingly and pulls away. His hand presses against your bared pectoral, and the needle falls. </p><p> </p><p>John is not a steady hand on the tattoo gun. His pressure wavers, often landing on too hard, too deep, too painful, and you cannot stop the little grunts and gasps that burst from you against the pain. </p><p> </p><p>He talks as he tattoos you, laying thick lines under a clavicle that is knotted and dips oddly from a bad break. “Sin must be exposed.” He says as he admires his handy work. For a second his fingers tap across your collarbone, quick and hard, like a stick rattling across a drum. He uses that hand to push off from you, jumping quickly to his feet, then away, backing deeper into the church, toward the altar, towards where your friends are gathered around, where they are <em>threatened. </em></p><p> </p><p>Sit up and wipe at the sluggish blood dripping down your forehead, diverting around your nose and into your eyes until it trails down your face and joins with the crusted blood from your nose. </p><p> </p><p>Look down at your chest and see yourself bare. Torso a mass of old bruises, and contusions, bright red slashes where they cut away your shirt, and a new, bloody black addition. Block font and heavy, <strong>WRATH</strong> stares at you. </p><p> </p><p>“Let's begin!” John cries and you are hauled to your feet, and forward a few unsteady steps. The cultists at your side hold you firm with dry hands and hot metal. Pistols tilted towards your skull, they shove you forward until you are standing beside Mary May, and Nick, and Jerome, who stands furious in front of you, bloody chested and flayed.</p><p> </p><p>John leads the scene like theater, feeding lines, and directing movement, until Nick is crying on the ground and Jerome is standing in front of you, furious and tight jawed. His bible is held flat in front of you, brown cover worn with its foil stamped cross. His eyes are tearing into yours and yours into his, and you remember, all those lives past, Jerome haloed by light as he pulls you from the van following your first baptism. You remember, thinking John Brown, and guns hidden in bible boxes, and </p><p> </p><p>you</p><p> </p><p>lunge for it. Grabbing the bible and tearing it open, and finding the pistol inside it. You fire for John just at the Peggie at your side knocks into you, the shot goes wide, and the church descends into chaos. </p><p> </p><p>Fight and kill and murder, until it is you and May May in an armored truck, and you are kiling your way to John’s Ranch. Until you have swapped the car for a plane and are chasing John through the sky with Nick at your side, until you are taking bullets, and the control panel is screaming at you, and your ears are full of a shrill beeping, and you just need one more good hit to John’s single seater and you’ll have him. You’ll have him in an explosion of aluminum and jet fuel.</p><p> </p><p>It’s Nick who takes Seed down with a well placed burst of machine gun fire. Watch as his engine blows out and the plane falls into a dive. Swan after him and ready your parachute, as Nick crows his victory over the headset. Jump from your plane and follow him down. Meet him in a flutter of parachute silk, and blooming cloth. Cut yourself free of the rigging, and lunge for him, take him to his knees with a firm tackle and a knife through the ribs. Watch as his eyes bug, and the air passes through his lips as a sharp wheeze. Kneel over him, bracket his body with your legs, plant one hand in the mud by his head and lean down into his face.</p><p> </p><p>“Fuck you, John.” You whisper and you pull the cord around his neck until the key is in your grip. He follows you up, hand slamming down upon your wrist, and uses your backward momentum to sit up. His blue eyes dig into yours as he asks.</p><p> </p><p>“What if Joseph is right? Did you ever stop to think about that?” John grins at you, even as his voice slurs with the blood crawling up his throat. “You want this key because you think you're saving people, but they are already safe. We had a plan!”</p><p> </p><p>John shoves your arm away and falls back into the mud, blood bubbles up into his mouth and he coughs and laughs, and talks his way to death. He’s throwing a lot of blame around for a man who has literally kidnapped and tortured people. </p><p> </p><p>The bunker key is warm in your palm as you push yourself to your feet and stumble away. You hear him take his final breath and you are gone. </p><p> </p><p>Trek through the woods bare chested and bloodstained. You have the pistol in the holster on your hip, and the knife at your side and nothing is going to keep you from Joey Hudson.</p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>Night is falling by the time you’ve climbed up the mountain side to where the heavy concrete of John’s bunker resides. You scale a tree and pull out your binoculars to do some recon. The place is swarming, everyone moving with a sort of frenetic energy, an underlying current of fear and uncertainty to their movement. This far away, you can't hear their conversation, but you can only imagine they have to be distraught over their missing herald. </p><p> </p><p>You take the time to watch them, to catalogue any following proper patrol patterns, then move in with knife in hand.</p><p> </p><p>You sneak your way into the chain link fence that surrounds the motor pool. Take out those with wavering paths with a tight hand pressed over their mouth and a blade drawn across their neck, hide their bodies in the growing shadows of wheel wells, and pull anything useful from their corpses.</p><p> </p><p>Splatter yourself in blood and fresh churned mud until you look more demon than man. Clear their forces, until it is just you and the skittering of nocturnal wildlife above ground. </p><p> </p><p>Swap your knife for a light machine gun before you swipe John's key through the reader. Disengage the lockdown, and descend into the abyss.</p><p> </p><p>The bunker is ultimately a creepy place. All rough concrete, and bizzare propaganda. See posters with John's face proclaiming the power of YES!, see dark stenciled promises and mantras. </p><p> </p><p>Make a graveyard of this bunker. Plow through Peggies with abandon, and a rising anxiety. The closer to the control room you crawl, the worse it becomes. Feel the spine tingling discomfort of rising horror before you even encounter the first bit of body art.</p><p> </p><p>Shudder under the empty eyes of bodies sprouting antlers and sewn on wings. Of corpses clasping candles and spread like martyrs upon crosses. Get distracted by the horror of it. Get distracted and cry out when the chain link fencing shudders behind you and a body descends. Push away the assailant, shy away from their blows. Stumble back and trip over a chair and they follow you down, landing hard on your ribcage, knife in hand, straining against your hold on their wrists, as they force their shank, down down down. </p><p> </p><p>“Joey!” You gasp, fearful and ragged.</p><p> </p><p>Hudson screams at you, and pressed forward, knife an unwavering force towards your heart.</p><p> </p><p>“Joey stop!” You cry again, and this time her eyes fly to your face, and you can see the recognition hit her. She sobs and falls back, legs tangling with your knees.</p><p> </p><p>“Rook. Oh god, oh god, it’s you. It’s <em>you</em>.” She sobs the last word, folding in towards your chest as she shakes and clings and you wrap her tight. Hold her close as she heaves out words. Doing her best to share information even as she tries to crawl inside you.</p><p> </p><p>You who are the first safe face she’s seen in a month, you who were <em>her </em>probie, who was <em>her </em> responsibility to train, and support, and mold for those four months of training <strike>so long ago. </strike></p><p> </p><p>She folds into you, and you hold her tight, shushing her, and whispering consolations into her ear, as she shakes and talks and tells you-</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>The Peggies- lost their minds, just started scrambling around-did you do that? Did you-bunker went in to lock down- I thought- I thought- Forever.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>And she talks about Joseph, spits bile about his visits, of his snake like regard, how he would just watch and watch and watch as she begged for his mercy. </p><p> </p><p>She shoves off you and stumbles to her feet, wiping a hand across her bruised face, brushing aside tears. “There were other people down here. We need to get them out, can you help me?”</p><p> </p><p>Of course you can. Of course. </p><p> </p><p>So you press your pistol into her hand, and the two of you return to John’s control room, you unlock all the cells, and you go to clear out the rest of the bunker. You take point, hiding Joey in deep shadows and behind safe corners, until you have taken down the opposition. Come back to her with bloodied hands and a gunshot to the meat of your arm when you don't end a fight quick enough - clean enough. But come back to her, and lead her forward. Gather the captured residents of Hope County, let them huddle behind Joey as you climb up. Up past the rest of John’s Chosen to freedom.</p><p> </p><p>Stand outside in the full darkness. See the stars blinking up in the sky and hold Joey’s hand as you radio Dutch.</p><p> </p><p>Radio Dutch and wait for the Resistance and breathe out your relief into the cool fall air. </p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>Take Hudson home with you that night. Push her into the shower then wrap her wounds when she comes out clean. Bundle her up in Sara’s sweatpants and an old oversized hoodie of yours from college. Feed her and let her huddle close as you sit on your Goodwill couch and play a movie neither of you is watching. Hold her as she cries but pretend that you don't see the tears. Know from four months of shadowing her that acknowledging them will get you punched in the face. </p><p> </p><p>Rub at the scabs along your swollen knuckles and wait until she’s cried herself out. Until she’s fallen asleep against your side, until it is quiet except for her stuffy-nosed breaths and breathe out your tension into the darkness of your room. </p><p> </p><p>Breathe and swallow down the rising giddiness that’s tickling at your throat. Lean your head back and grin. Grin and pretend it isn't anything but happiness that makes hot liquid poor from your eyes. Pretend this isn't you breaking. </p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>Wake up with a crick in your neck and Joey plastered to your side, her sharp elbow pressing into the bruise on your back. Stare blearily at the microwave clock that always runs 8 minutes behind and blink at the time. Lay there, under her warm body and wonder how things got so far away from you. </p><p> </p><p>“You make a good pillow.” Joey says groggily more than an hour later, pushing her face into your side before sliding away and sitting up. </p><p> </p><p>“I do my best,” you mutter in return as you ease yourself vertical, babying your bruises and aching joints. Groan like you’re an old man, as you press fingers into your sore neck, and do your best to ignore her mocking laugh. </p><p> </p><p>“You have food?” </p><p> </p><p>Grunt in affirmation but wiggle your hand side to side, “Nothing fresh, box of Mac 'n cheese maybe?”</p><p> </p><p>Limp up behind her as she starts to pull open your barren cabinets, emptied after a long month of religious war and burn with embarrassment. “Can you make something out of flour and….and taco shells?”</p><p> </p><p>“No.”</p><p> </p><p>“No…” shuffle your feet and run a hand over the bandage-wrapped bullet wound you gained from John’s bunker, “they’ve got food at the Spread Eagle.” </p><p> </p><p>“Rook, you live above a grocery store.” </p><p> </p><p>Shrug and shuffle and fuss. “It’s been busy.”</p><p> </p><p>She signs and tugs her borrowed hoodie on straight. “Spread Eagle it is then.”</p><p> </p><p>Joey leads you down the staircase, the two of you limping down the narrow steps. Just as you reach the landing a knock comes from your door. The two of you freeze and you step in front of her, shielding her with your body as you crack open the door. </p><p> </p><p>“Hey dude!” Sharky calls, raising a 24 pack of beer, “I got the beer, you got the space, let’s party!”</p><p> </p><p>You step into the afternoon light, and there’s Hurk with a black Webster grill, Addie and Grace toting a large cooler. Your dog collides with your legs and wiggles around against your knees until you bend down to pat pat pat. </p><p> </p><p>“I-yeah Shark, sounds great.” You step into the October sunshine and Joey follows at your back to have a grill out with your friends. </p><p> </p><p>Spend the rest of the day and most of the night celebrating John's death. After the first hour, Mary May shows up with a case of liquor and brown paper bags of bar fries. Jerome has communion wine and canned fruit juice that he mixes on site for a homemade sangria. Kim and Nick show up with two pans of brownies.</p><p> </p><p>Nick slides then into the table with a wink. "Frosted ones have some 'oregano' in them, Officer, so keep them away from any actual law enforcement, okay?" </p><p> </p><p>Snort and wave him off and hand a can of soda to Kim, when she waddles up to you. Closer and closer to bursting with each passing day.</p><p> </p><p> "This baby better be worth all the beer I'm missing,  Dep." She pulls the aluminum can from your hand and brings it to her lips.</p><p> </p><p>“You know she will, Kim.” Put your arm around her shoulder and squeeze her against your side.</p><p> </p><p>She sighs and burrows into you for a moment before pulling away and moving towards her husband, unfrosted brownie in hand.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
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        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Whitetails</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Originally posted as 1 chapter, later split to help readability.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Come to slowly with a brain weighed down by yesterday’s liquor. Groan and press your face closer to the hard floor, suffer your own poor decision making and try to lick away the musty layer of hops that coats the inside of your mouth. Shuffle and pull close the body in your arms, nestle into their hair at the base of their neck and sigh deeply.</p><p>Listen to the familiar snores of Hurk to the right and the quiet snuffling of Sharky on the couch behind you. His hand falling down and brushing your shoulder gently in time with his breaths. Listen to Nick as he shuffles through your kitchen, dumping out a handful of Tylenol and downing them with the last of your orange juice. Crack your eyes in time to watch him wince and press his hand to his flayed chest.</p><p>“You okay?” You ask quietly, easing your arm from under Hudson’s head and pushing your way to your feet. Shuffle into the kitchen as quietly as you can, but catch Grace’s eyes flash open as you pass her chair.</p><p>Nick shrugs when you enter the kitchen, “Was better, y’know, before John. Better now without him too.”</p><p>Catch his elbow in your hand and squeeze it gently. Lower your head and catch his eye, face serious. “If you need some time, Nick-”</p><p>“Don’t.” He cuts you off, his own hands squeezing at your shoulders. “Don’t start that man, I’m in this with you. Til the fucking end you got it?”</p><p>He shakes you a little at the end, eyes firm and sure.</p><p>Nod and cut your eyes down and away. You don’t deserve your friends, you have never deserved them.</p><p>—————</p><p>The problem is - you like Faith. You like that she is small, and soft, and little. And honestly, that's probably the point. Faith is the balm to the slog that John had put you through, to the absolute war crime that is Jacob’s Territory. Faith, in contrast, is a gentle sort of coercion. She exists in a soft world of blushing promises and meandering lies. And while you don't fall for them, you are taken by them.</p><p>Time and time again, she takes you.</p><p>—————</p><p>You are meandering through the mountains in the north of Faith’s Territory, having just picked up Peaches, when you hear Virgil’s voice piping over the radio.</p><p>The message starts out fairly normal, a promise of safety at the jail; food, water, shelter. All good things, though you are fairly surprised to hear the Mayor’s voice on the airwaves a month into the Seed’s Occupation. Without your particular brand of violence to help keep the peace, you honestly hadn't expected Whitehorse to be able to hold the jail under Resistance control.</p><p>“Any Resistance out there near the Water Treatment Plant,” Virgil's voice filters through your ear piece, “Peggies are dumping Bliss into the water supply, reports are coming in from nearby locations that the water is already being tainted. It’s just going to get worse if they continue. We cannot let them poison our water. Whoever is near there, you MUST put a stop to things.”</p><p>Which is...not good. Also new. You don’t think you’ve ever heard of Eden’s Gate drugs entering the water supply before. The river, yeah, but not the damn drinking water.</p><p>Take a knee and pull your map from your breast pocket, peel open the thin paper and trace your fingers over the mountainous topography until you find your target. Then estimate your location and hit the transceiver on your radio.</p><p>“This is Rook, I’ll take care of it.”</p><p>Head down the mountain, with Peaches at your side and laugh at the confused ‘Who?” that statics out of your radio.</p><p>—————</p><p>Meet Faith for the first time that life sopping wet and drowning in Bliss fumes in the control room of the Water Treatment Plant. Your eyes are sparkling with white, the world a soft blur around you, your nose, mouth, and ears are all waterlogged with the oily residue of Bliss. It sits chemical and sugar sweet on your tongue. And Faith is ethereal at your side. She is frustrated with you, and she is a road block without ever touching you.</p><p>“Stop this!” She cries, standing next to the second water pump you intend to strap a remote detonator to. “It’s pointless! You can’t stop the Bliss!”</p><p>“Maybe not.” You say, feeling foolish talking to a hallucination, but feel rude about not responding anyway. “But I have to try, don’t I?”</p><p>She huffs and stamps her foot against the concrete where it makes no noise. But then, why would it, she’s not really there. Push through her and huff another cloud of Bliss, weave slightly, on your feet at the strength of it. Press the bomb to the heavy pipe and stumble away, duck behind a concrete wall and press the meat of your forearms to you ears to block out the sound. Click down on the detonator and wait for the flash of fire and acrid smoke.</p><p>Kick open the door, and lead your cougar into the woods and hit the radio button. “Water Treatment Plant’s been dealt with, tell Whitehorse I’m on my way.”</p><p>—————</p><p>“On my way” ends up being a bit of a lie, ends up taking hours. That's the problem with Faith and Jacob’s territory, the fucking topography. What is an easy hike through the Valley ends up being a knee grinding slog up mountain sides. You exhaust yourself climbing up rocky slopes and skidding down steep passes. You have the particular misfortune of being new to Faith's region and not having taken out enough Peggie roadblocks to make driving safe enough to be viable.</p><p>Peaches keeps pace with you the entire way, slinking up rock ledges with skill and grace while you heave yourself up behind her.</p><p>Take a moment to lean against one of the cliff sides, and catch your breath. Wiggle your fingers at your cat until she slumps against your side and lets you run your hands across her neck and over the little soft rounds of her ears. Breathe deep and regain that corner of the eye sparkle from the Bliss evaporating off your damp clothing. Wait for the high to pass, but struggle to your feet when it doesn't. Peer up the cliff face, catch sight of a grappling hook marker and let your rope fly.</p><p>“Go on then.” You tell Peaches as you give your grappling hook a firm tug. Wait for her to traverse up the ledge and to disappear over the cliff’s edge. Make kissy noises at her as she peers down at you and chuffs.</p><p>Start your ascent, haul yourself up, more strength than finesse, plant feet on rock grooves and climb. Climb and climb and under the tint of Bliss, don't notice the strained snap that comes from your rope. Don't notice the fraying section until gravity has taken a hold of you and you are falling.</p><p>Falling and falling and gravity has reached its terminal velocity, you are moving downwards at 9.8 Meters/s/s. And you are crashing downwards at 9.8 m/s/s too. And you are breaking your ribs in a physics equation from hell, and you are rolling and then falling and then you are crashing.</p><p>You are crashing, you are crashing. You are….</p><p>Awake. And you eyes are full of bliss, your nose is full of bliss, your mouth is coated in pollen. Breathe and it hurts, twitch and it hurts, but that’s okay, it doesn't matter. Your fine, you are fine and you are above the pain, you are beyond it.</p><p>Blink, and the sun is up, the sun is up and your vision is filled with it. All you see is the sun and Bliss Flowers. Their white petals cradle you, press sweet kisses against your skin, their pollen falls heavy and yellow on your skin. You eyes are alight with fireworks, and you cannot move. You cannot do much of anything, but lie there and breathe.</p><p>The bliss takes you that life, it takes you gentle, and it takes you slow. It is an overwhelming force and a kind one. It steals your sight, and then your mind and for a very long time you know nothing but darkness.</p><p>—————</p><p>Come to slowly with a brain weighed down by yesterday’s liquor. Come to slowly and then all at once. Freeze with your eyes wide open, breathe in the scent of Joey’s hair, feel the weight of her in your arms. Hear Hurk snore, and Sharky snuffle and Nick in your kitchen.</p><p>Shake as adrenaline floods your body, as your heart pounds, and your lungs gasp. Sit up quickly, dislodge Joey from your arms, press your hands to your face, and bite the skin between your forefinger and thumb, keep biting until blood bursts into your mouth and Hudson tears your arm away.</p><p>“What the fuck are you doing!?” She shoves at you, knocking you hard against the couch and suddenly Sharky is up with a startled “Wha!?”</p><p>Squeeze your fist tight and press it hard against your chest. “Sorry, nothing, sorry.”</p><p>“That doesn't look like nothing!” She grabs at your arm but you stand and move away, passing Nick into the kitchen and pulling out the last of your orange juice before he gets to it. Swig it straight from the carton and swallow a mouthful that tastes like citrus and blood.</p><p>Don’t make eye contact with Nick as he moves his eyes from your hand to your face. Trash the carton and cross your arms, tucking your bleeding hand underneath your armpit and raising your eyebrows in a ‘what of it’ at him in return.</p><p>He sighs and pulls a water glass from your cupboard before filling it from the tap. He swallows down his painkillers and stares at you expectantly until you shuffle out into the main room with him trailing behind.</p><p>Sharky is blinking at you slowly, rubbing sleep gunk from his eyes and Grace is eyeing you in that particularly vindictive way she musters before having her first cup of coffee. Hurk is still passed out under one of your bath towels and lets out an exceptionally loud snore that has Sharky laughing.</p><p>“I’m going to wake up the others.” Nick says brushing past you for your bedroom, where Kim and Adelaide crashed for the night, once the alcohol had hit the older woman and the exhaustion of being pregnant took Kim.</p><p>Sharky kicks at his cousin’s foot until the man comes awake with a yelp. Hurk Jr. yawns and smiles and says, “Breakfast?”</p><p>—————</p><p>Go to the Henbane and deliver freedom unto a jail. Travel north and stop Faith from dumping Bliss into the water. Head north and whistle for Peaches, your animals unlike your friends remember you with each passing life. Your cougar with dichromatic eyes meets you at the base of her home mountain and covers you with her scent. She takes pleasure in brushing her face against the lengthening stubble of your beard.</p><p>Head north and meet up with your other cougar. Talk and laugh and joke and let her take Tulip up into the sky and ferry you between Faith’s Shines. Blow them up with dynamite from the air, cackle with the joy of destruction.</p><p>When the shrines are all demolished Adeline lands her chopper on top of a cliffside, remote, and far away from both cult outposts and Resistance hideouts. She turns to you, looks you up and down and smiles and asks and you think about it and nod.</p><p>So she powers down Tulip and crawls onto your lap and kisses you and you kiss back and then you fuck Adelaide because she asks you to. Because you're looking for some no strings attached relief and she likes the way you take Xander seriously. Because you gave your wholehearted trust to her seventeen lives ago when she held you as you bled out, stroking your hair and face until you gave your last shuddering breath and died on her lap.</p><p>Use her just like she’s using you on the bench seat of the Tulip and walk away happy.</p><p>—————</p><p>Go to the Henbane and die in the Henbane, for all that Faith is soft and gentle, her Angels sure aren't.</p><p>—————</p><p>It is your thirty sixth life (or is it thirty seventh?) when you realize you’ve lost count. You are in the Whitetails and Jacob’s ‘Only You’ has settled like oil on your tongue.</p><p>You pull yourself from the Devil’s Drop and wipe your bloodied palms against your ragged pants.</p><p>Later that evening, when you are tucked inside some prepper’s bunker eating their apple preserves and sucking down moonshine, you take a knife to the skin beneath the crook of your elbow and carve a 36.</p><p>—————</p><p>Dutch has asked you to look out for his niece, a girl named Jess Black, who has been stirring up chaos in the Mountains while you have been kicking dirt in the Valley. This is a new bit of trouble, that your previous (and limited) forays into the State Park had never uncovered. It may be a bit of a time thing, you figure, just like how the Jail and Falls End will wait for your arrival, some events won’t occur until their due time either.</p><p>So you track her down, down to the Baron Lumber Mill, where Jacob’s forces have been collecting fresh bodies to add to their ranks. From your spot up on the hill overlooking the outpost, you can see tarp covered cages, and mud stained red with blood.</p><p>“Two Judges and their handlers, sniper, five-no six assorted on the ground.” You report to Grace as you both scour the area through sniper scopes.</p><p>“One more behind the shed out back.” Grace replies, “Has a flame pack.”</p><p>Grunt in acknowledgement and pass your gaze over the area once more. “Judge handlers first, then the pyro.”</p><p>“Copy.”</p><p>“Sync?”</p><p>“Sync.”</p><p>And you fire. The two handlers fall, your second shot fells the man with the flame pack and Grace takes out the rooftop sniper.</p><p>Swap your sniper rifle for a knife and press your free hand to Peaches’ shoulder. “See you down there.” You mutter to Grace before slinking down the hillside after the mountain lion. Move silently through the base plunging your blade through skin and cloth until it is just your squad and the two Judges, and Peaches has a gleam in her eye to make short work of them.</p><p>Wait for Grace in the control room, looting the place for keys and important paperwork before the two of you come to the cages down below.</p><p>The people inside them are bloodied, and shaky with hunger. The fresher captures eye you with hope, the others distrust.</p><p>Grace has taken to the radio, putting a call into Eli’s Whitetails while you go about unlocking cages. Give each occupant a firm once over with your eyes until you come across a young woman fitting Dutch’s description.</p><p>“You Jess?” You ask as you pull her cell door open and step aside.</p><p>“What of it?” She snarls in return, fisting her hands to hide the shake.</p><p>Flash yours, palms up and open, relaxed and unarmed, if bloody. “Dutch sent me, said you were in trouble. I’m Rook.”</p><p>She swallows and nods, and finally sticks out a stiff hand. “Thanks.” She shakes yours once firmly, then pulls away. “He’s mentioned you, once or twice. You did good work with John.”</p><p>Nod at her once. “You want some help getting back to Dutch’s?”</p><p>“No.” She stomps over to one of the nearby tables, laid out with area maps and Hunter’s gear. “There’s someone I need to find.” She pulls a quiver across her shoulders and palms a bow. She turns to you, and frowns, scarred face accentuating her rage-hot eyes. “Are you in the business of getting even, Deputy?”</p><p>—————</p><p>The problem is Jacob. The problem is always Jacob. The problem is Jacob and the horror show that the Whitetails become under his rule. It is enough that he has squads of direwolves, and that he decorates in human remains, (though they all do, don't they...) that he decorates in human remains and doesn't try to soften the blow like Faith and her flowery art projects or John and his merging of men and the wild. No. Jacob just strings them up gory, all too human and very, very, dead.</p><p>It is a warning and a threat wrapped into one meaty, eviscerated package. And it works. You don't like going into the Whitetails. There, you said it. Admitted it. Even to yourself. Jacob scares you. He scares you. Even though you know to expect it, when he captures you, it never gets better. The song, the conditioning, the training in the maze. The endless, endless repetition. It wears on you, it hurts you more than anything else the Seeds have thrown at you. It is too much like your own endless cycle of death.</p><p>And that's the real problem, isn't it. The fucking endless cycle. On and on and on, it keeps going, you keep fighting, and dying, and suffering under the hands of these nutjobs who thought they could play god, play dictator with your soul.</p><p>And what turn of fate decided your path in all of this? Is this purgatory? Your own personal Hell? Is this the endless death dream of a comatose mind? Did you even survive that helicopter crash? What did you do to deserve this?</p><p>Cry out for answers in your mind and receive none.</p><p>—————</p><p>Something is wrong with the Bliss.</p><p>Or maybe...something is wrong with the Bliss and you.</p><p>It has sunk its teeth into you, Deputy. It has sunk its teeth and is holding tight. The Henbane region is flooded with it. It's in the water, it's in the air, every breath is laden with pollen, it settles into the nooks and crannies of your clothing, films across car windows and finds its way into food. Every blink leaves you woozy with sparkles, every drink of water sends Bliss flooding through your veins. You are immersed, and you are fading.</p><p>You are fading into its soft pull, and you cannot hide it anymore.</p><p>Whitehorse has seen it, seen the Bliss pull pull pull on others, and he sees it happening to you. His youngest deputy, his baby sheriff. He pulls you into the prison and disarms you of your guns and with his well meaning face.</p><p>He clears the shower block and forces you under the dwindling supply of rain water until the pollen has run in yellow streams from your skin, and you no longer reek of its sweetness. Whitehorse wraps you in a towel, and then clean clothes, and settles you into a bed outside Doc Lindsay’s office where they can ease you through the detox. Through the shakes and the trauma and the hissing anger that comes when the Bliss runs dry and your eyes are no longer clouded by sparkles, and sweet Faith is no longer brushing against your ear, and you are furious with it. You are screaming and tearing, and destroying with all the wrath that John marked you.</p><p>“No! No!” Whitehorse cries, his hands like claws on your shoulder, “She doesn't get to take you, Rook! She doesn't get to take you!”</p><p>But that's the thing...the Bliss already has.</p><p>—————</p><p>Cut a forty six into your arm and head into the Whitetails, where Jacob may rule in terror but does not rule by Bliss. Disappear into those tall trees and endless mountains and breathe untainted air.</p><p>Gather Cheeseburger and have him watch your back as you ghost between Wolf Beacons and outposts. Through untamed forest and contested roadways. Crash into Jacob’s territory like a force of nature, until you have his attention, until he has threatened and sent Hunters after you.</p><p>Let them take you. Let them take you to another round of ‘Only You’ and another round of slaughter in the maze. Listen to Jacob preach his nihilistic ideals, his perfected Darwinism. Scoff when he talks about how the world has forgotten to be strong and accept the firm backhand that follows.</p><p>Grin at him, grin at him with teeth that have ripped the throat out of others, with a mouth that has told a million lies, and laugh and say, “If you think the world is soft, then you haven't been paying attention.”</p><p>Blitz your way through his trial, with drugs in your system, and rage in your ears. Kill and kill and kill, and cringe to admit that after numerous lives under Jacob’s tutelage he has turned you into a flawless butcher.</p><p>Wait for Eli and his Whitetails to free you from Jacob’s clutches, nine days to the hour of when Seed’s Hunters brought you in. Let Wheaty cut through the bindings holding you to your chair and pull you to your feet. Ignore their chatter about your trustworthiness because Eli has never let you down, because even though the Whitetails know that friends can't always be trusted, Eli has never doubted you before, and won't doubt you now.</p><p>Retire to the Wolf Den, rest, recover and gather missions. Then head out and lay waste to Jacob’s forces once more. Show him what his training can do.</p><p>Show him and show him and show him until he has gone quiet on the open channel radios. Until his voice snaps out over his Chosen’s secure lines, and the Hunters come for you.</p><p>Kill those hunters, and the ones he sends after, and the ones he sends after that. Until the old wolf himself comes out of his den.</p><p>Lead Jacob on a merry chase through the mountains until you have separated him from his squad and left Cheeseburger to deal with the rest. Until it is just you and him in a sloped clearing amidst the pines. Where the air is heavy with the promise of an early snowstorm. and the guns in your hands promise violence.</p><p>“Y’know, Deputy,” He says in that low rasping tone of his, “If it were up to me, you would have been dead a long time ago.”</p><p>Hum back in acknowledgement, because while true, this is a statement you’ve heard before, just before Joseph himself comes to kneel outside your cage and tell you about the murder of his daughter.</p><p>Shift your weight and watch as he mirrors it. He grins, “I did a good job with you. Maybe too good.”</p><p>Then he attacks, snapping his pistol up and pulling quick on the trigger, and you surge right and come in low, taking him out at his knees. Bring him down, shove him back, and smash his hand against the ground until the gun goes flying. Then pummel at his ribs and face with your free hand. Take hits in return and struggle to keep him pinned. He is of a height with you, of a weight with you, and you haven't dealt with this kind of match up since your senior year of college, in the last game of your life that stole your chances of playing professionally with a particularly brutal collar bone break.</p><p>Struggle and batter each other bloody, take his foot to your ribs as he kicks out of your hold and sends you hard into a tree. Wheeze for breath, and roll to your feet before your lungs have air. Charge him, pull a knife, take an elbow to your face, and spit blood. Slash at him, and block his haymaker with your free arm.</p><p>Trip as he wraps a leg around your knee and forces you backwards, lose the breath a second time as you strike stone and stab blindly with your knife. Get lucky when the blade slides between Jacob’s ribs and hits home. Then lose your grip as he slams his free hand into your elbow and forces both your arms down. Blood bursts from his lips as he leans over you snarling. Snarling, snarling until his teeth are at your throat, and they are tearing away and you are screaming and shaking and struggling against his mouth at your neck.</p><p>Jacob Seed laughs as he dies, with your knife piercing his heart. He remains there, holding you down, dripping blood from his mouth as you spill yours from your neck. Die together slowly, choke on the blood in your throat and the deep angry blue of his eyes.</p><p>—————</p><p>Come to violently, viciously, with a strangled gasp and flailing limbs. Squirm away from Joey and smash into the couch behind you. Sharky yelps as your elbow crashes into the side of his head, and Joey leaps to her feet like a cat with a stepped on tail. Everyone is yelling, you are yelling, Nick has stumbled out of the kitchen, and Kim and Addie have thrown open the bedroom door.</p><p>“Where’s the fire?” Adelaide calls, face pale and drawn from the sudden awakening. Her makeup has smeared slightly in her sleep and rose pink lipstick trails in a smudge off the side of her mouth.</p><p>“It’s okay, we’re okay.” Nick says loudly hands pressing down against the air with fingers splayed.</p><p>Your friends start talking over each other as you gasp for air, palms pressing tight against your eyes so that they burst with color. “Sorry, I didn't mean - Sorry.” You chant.</p><p>There is a chorus of “it’s okay” and “just surprised” and “you okay?”</p><p>But it’s Hurk who takes this in silently, who watches you with narrowed eyes before shuffling beside you. It’s Hurk who slowly wraps an arm around your shoulders and pulls you against his chest. It’s Hurk who wraps you up tightly and says, “It’s okay, dude,” like its no big deal. Find yourself loving him for it.</p><p>—————</p><p>Spend the next week wandering around the Valley. Pretend it’s because there are a lot of little side projects that need your attention, and not that you’re avoiding both the Henbane and the Whitetails. Not that you are afraid to fall back into the Bliss or face Jacob Seed head on again.</p><p>Head south into John’s territory with Boomer at your side and track down stray Peggies, locate the last hidden barrels of Bliss, and head across the river to take out a moose that got Judgeified. Have Addie help you with that one, her Tulip crossing ground that would have taken you days to span on foot.</p><p>Feel like a wealthy big game hunter, as you snipe the Bliss infected animals from the safety of the air, the vast majority of them falling to Adelaide’s guns.</p><p>When it's all said and done, and you’ve done a hack job of skinning the beasts, let her convince you to fly with her to the Marina.</p><p>“Xander’s been missing you.” She says, voice distorted by the helicopters headset. “He’s been collecting ingredients to make those X-treme-muscle-fuck-terminator protein shakes you like so much. It's taking all the room in the fridge!”</p><p>“Shit, sorry, Addie. I’d have come sooner if I knew.” You draw with a smirk.</p><p>She rolls her eyes at you, “That's what they all say, Sweetheart.”</p><p>The helicopter tips downwards, and you make your descent to the helipad.</p><p>“Just promise to do yoga with him this evening. Mama can use some excitement!”</p><p>—————</p><p>So that's how you find yourself in the Henbane, one protein shake fuller, and with a yoga session under your belt. Your muscles are sore in unfathomable places, and you couldn't even hit a third of the stretches Xander was capable of.</p><p>“It all comes with practice, my dude.” Xander said before you ultimately gave up and held warrior two while he contorted himself like a pretzel.</p><p>Feel better the following morning than you have in a long time and press a sloppy kiss to Adelaide’s cheek before heading south to gather Peaches and clear out the Water Treatment Plant.</p><p>Change into a dry set of clothes when it's all said and done, and the intake pumps are nothing more than scrap metal in your wake.</p><p>“Stop looking at me.” You scold Peaches when you're pulling on a new pair of pants, and she’s much too interested in the unprotected muscle of your belly. She just chirps at you and nuzzles up into your stomach anyway, pressing her big head past your protesting hands. Her whiskers tickle at your abdominals, and you push her away laughing before you reach for your henley and jacket.</p><p>Pull your head through the neck hole and notice Peaches has gone still, her ears twitching back and forth as her head cocks. She pushes out a low whuff of air that you’ve found means ‘Warning’, and she slinks to the door.</p><p>Drop your jacket and pick up your battle rifle as quietly as you can, ease your way to the wall and lift your head enough to peer out a window.</p><p>Freeze when you see the telltale red/black of Jacob’s Hunters. Freeze because there is a squad of four and they are not in their own territory. Freeze because a Herald’s Chosen never leave their leader’s territory.</p><p>You can hear the growling of the Judges, hear it and grow frantic, cut your eyes around the room and land on the water grate you had used as ingress. Peaches will never make it out that way, can't hold her breath, no matter how game she is to swim.</p><p>Swear quietly, drop your head to the stock of your gun and breathe in, then out. Palm a grenade and cook the timer, then chuck it hard as you burst through the door. Run the opposite direction with Peaches at your heel, cut hard for the woods as it explodes behind you, and arrows slice into the ground around your feet.</p><p>“Run, baby!” You call to your cat, as you swing your gun behind you and fire blind. Clatter through the foliage and up the hillside and feel the hot breath of the Judges behind you.</p><p>Cry out as one lupine mouth closes over your calf, dragging you down hard. Scream as the second goes for your left arm, ripping into flesh and yanking back hard on the joint. Scream as your arm pops loose with a resounding crack and don't stop the sob that tears from your lips.</p><p>Peaches roars and tackles a Judge off of you. Hear them tussle and fight and the sounds they make are hellish, rage filled and final. Kick your unencumbered foot at the wolf biting your leg while your right hand pulls free your side arm and loose bullets into its skull. Try and fail to struggle to your knees, press your face into the leaf litter and moan.</p><p>Hear Peaches keening to the side of you and then the subtle twang of a bowstring. Leather boots step into your eye line and then wedge under your shoulder to kick you onto your back.</p><p>“Hello, Deputy Rook.” The Hunter says before pulling an arrow from their quiver and shoving the tip into the meat of your thigh. Curse them as the Bliss takes hold and your eyesight goes red and then dark.</p><p>—————</p><p>You don't know where you are.</p><p>Wake up in a room with no furniture and freshly painted walls. There is one door, metal, also white, and featureless aside from a peephole. The room you are in is small, square and filled with three things. Yourself, a red sleeping bag, and a camera up high in the corner opposite the door. The light on it blinks a steady red.</p><p>There is a doorway sans door along the wall you are nestled against, but you can’t see inside it from your current location. The camera however, can.</p><p>Swallow dryly and let your eyes fall shut. Breathe deep and catalogue your own self. Limbs attached, left arm immobilized with duct tape and bandages, sore and swollen at the joint. Leg, painful, but wrapped in bandages only just starting to show pink. Head...pounding, Bliss headache, always worse after a bloodstream injection. Mouth dry. Cougar missing. Location unknown.</p><p>Breathe out and shift against the slick material of the sleeping bag. It’s high quality camping gear...water resistant, down filled, and tear proof. Think about moving, but heed the angry protest driving up your leg and be still. Close your eyes against the harsh fluorescent of the overhead light and wait.</p><p>Wait and wait and wait until your leg had bled through the bandages, and you’re woozy with thirst, and hunger has been clawing at your belly. Wait longer until your eyes close of their own accord and you can no longer open them.</p><p>Come to with a hand cradling your head and a water bottle spilling liquid into your mouth. “Ease up, you’re okay.” A voice says, familiar and rough.</p><p>Pay them no mind, and gulp down another mouthful. They huff and pull the bottle from your lips and settle you back down. “Y’never fucking listen.”</p><p>Forcing your eyes open is a hardship and you only manage a blurred sliver before giving it up as a bad job. The person leaning over you is haloed in fluorescent lights, casting their features in shadow.</p><p>Their hand taps you sharp on the jawbone. ‘You with me, Deputy?”</p><p>Grunt in acknowledgment and twitch your good hand into a fist.</p><p>“Good enough.” They say and disappear from your eyesight, but you can feel them pulling at the bandages on your leg. Yanking crusted bandages away from your skin with a callous disregard. You can't stop the wince and groan that follows a section of hair around the wound being epilated. Close your eyes against the sting of antiseptic that follows and flinch from the tight wrap of bandages.</p><p>They move to your arm, cutting your wrist free of the duct tape but keeping the section immobilizing your elbow and shoulder intact. Freeze up when they unravel the bandages from your wrist and clean the ragged bite with antiseptic, start to tremble when they slather it down in neosporin and wrap it tightly in bandages. Let your breath heave from your chest as they immobilize your wrist once more because your eyes are working fine, are blown wide and filled with the sight of Jacob fucking Seed.</p><p>“Are you awake now, Puppy?” The soldier smirks down at you.</p><p>Swing for him wildly, then thrash as he clamps down hard on your fist, pulling your arm down and away, pressing it back into the softness of the sleeping bag. “None of that.” Seed scolds, as he holds your floundering body down, hands pressing into your shoulders, setting fire to your nerves. He throws a leg over your torso and shifts so that his weight presses down on your hips, and he can immobilize your legs with his. He outwaits you, letting you writhe fishlike beneath him until you wear yourself out, a sweating panting mess.</p><p>“There we are.” He says, as he removes his hand from your bad shoulder and plants it next to your head, removing the pressing weight of him slightly so that your ribs can expand in full. “You all done? Got that out of your system?”</p><p>Snarl at him, and Jacob rasps out a laugh. “Of course not, you don't know how to stop.”</p><p>The other man shifts back so his weight is centered over your hips and he can tower above you. “Y’know, Deputy, the strangest thing happened to me. I woke up and everything seemed normal, right at first. But then I’m having some coffee, and I get a call from Joseph, and Joseph, he’s talking about how he needs all of us to come by the church that night. That something big is going to go down, that he needs me, and Faith, and John. But the thing is, Johnny’s been dead for a week. You killed him. He’s capital D dead.</p><p>“And I tell Joseph that, remind him, y’know? But he just gets all quiet, says it was just a bad dream, asks me to please come by the church that night. So I do of course, can’t say no to my little brother right? So I get there, and John’s alive, he's alive, and so fucking clueless. Doesn’t recognize a thing I tell him about the Reaping. Just laughs it off, says I was just having bad dreams.</p><p>“Then Joseph gathers us up at the front of the church and starts giving his sermon, you know the one, you’re familiar, you were there. White Horses and Death? Ring a bell?</p><p>“And that's when I can't write this off as a weird bit of Deja Vu anymore. When every fucking day plays out the same way no matter what I do to try and change things. People moving like pieces on a chessboard with no success in deviating from the plan!”</p><p>He snarls and leans over you, hand coming down to grasp you under the jawbone, holding you tight, but not crushing your airway. Grasp and pull at his wrist but his grip remains firm.</p><p>“Then, about a week ago, you killed Johnny. Y’killed him, and it was like I could fucking breathe again. People would listen, plans could change. I wasn't tied down to the same fucking script! And I noticed something weird, something wrong. You weren’t playing by the rules, little dog. You were down screwing around in the Valley when you should have been ruining my day.”</p><p>His hand goes tight around your neck, and he shoves you back. “Then I got to thinking, just what was the impetus for this whole little lie? Why, it’s the Junior Fucking Deputy. He fucking killed me and started this fucking nonsenese!”</p><p>Jacob breathes deep and sighs out, sliding his hand from your throat and he taps his fingers against the crook of your elbow, the one bound tight to your side, where only seven days ago you had carved the numbers 4 and 7 into your flesh.</p><p>“But you know all about that I think.” Jacob pushes himself to his feet and takes a few steps away. He takes a deep breath then says</p><p>“I’ve decided to remove you from the playing board, Deputy. Don’t take it personally.”</p><p>—————</p><p>They leave you alone for hours, for days, just you and a worsening infection. You and the black spots that crawl into your vision when you force yourself to your feet and limp toward the open doorway that holds a small bathroom. The tile white, mostly clean, and out of date.</p><p>Take a piss and flush water that is a murky shade of yellow brown. Try turning on the tap to the sink and get nothing. The shower is likewise useless. Stumble back to your sleeping bag and pass out from dehydration and the pride remaining within you to not lap toilet water like a dog.</p><p>Come to with pills on your tongue and a water bottle spilling past your lips. Swallow instinctively and nearly choke when the pills get stuck in your dry throat. Wheeze against the shoulder supporting you and wait for them to offer the bottle again. Suck it dry and still feel thirsty, feel woozy, and nauseous.</p><p>“M-More?” you ask as they lay you back down.</p><p>“Not yet.” Comes the firm response, and they move on to change the bandages at your wrist and calf.</p><p>Hear Jacob settle onto the ground near your head, see him vaguely, a blur of skin tone and red as he leans over you.</p><p>“So, forty seven lives?” He asks.</p><p>Grunt in acknowledgement and nod. Receive a sip of water in return, enough to wet your lips and moisten the desert of your tongue.</p><p>“How many of them did you spend in the Whitetails?”</p><p>Freeze up for a moment as your mind tries to think, tries to push through the exhaustion. “A - a third maybe? Spent most of it...in the Valley. Died a lot….”</p><p>He lets you have a larger swallow. “Died a lot early on?”</p><p>Nod in agreement and blink blearily up at him. “What are you going to do with me?”</p><p>Seed taps twice against your face. “I already told you, Deputy. I’m going to keep you here with me. Nice and safe, where you can’t harm anything.”</p><p>—————</p><p>Jacob comes by more regularly after that, twice a day to feed you antibiotics and buy answers to questions with sips of water.</p><p>He never asks you anything important, not after the first time he asked you the location of the Wolf’s Den, and you refused to say a word for the next three visits. Mostly it regards what you know about the cycle of rebirth you’ve found yourself in, if you’ve noticed any changes life to life, or if events stay on schedule, people on script. If you’ve ever killed Joseph, or Faith, or himself.</p><p>Glare at him when he asks that, glare and turn away and refuse to talk no matter the water he offers in trade or little bites of bread he presses to your lips.</p><p>It's been about eight days, and you are well enough to limp around your little cell of a room. Stretch the muscles of your leg and gently massage the retreating inflammation of your shoulder. Limp in a tight square and wait for Jacob’s eye to peer through the spyhole and the door to push open. Time it so that you are in the corner under the security camera and out of sight of the peephole.</p><p>Lunge for Seed as he steps inside, drag him down to the ground and claw at him, burn through the little energy you have to make a point. To make him bleed. Smash an elbow into his nose when he finally flips you, drives your face into cheap linoleum and plants his knee in your back. One hand drawls one of your hands high behind your back, and you shriek and thrash, and blood drips down your neck from where his head is hovering over yours as he holds you down.</p><p>“That's it.” He gasps around the blood in his nose. “That’s it. I’ve been waiting for this. Just calm down.”</p><p>Struggle against his hold until you are heaving for breath, until you have burned through the energy provided by a sip of water and a sliver of bread. Tremble with fatigue as Jacob speaks calmly in your ear. The same fucking indifferent tone he used in the maze. The one that set your gut roiling and yet filled you with a shamed sort of pride. Don't notice at first the music being piped into the room. A classical piece, familiar without ever knowing its name. Shudder against it and Jacob’s low voice in your ear. Calm down, be still, good boy,</p><p>just</p><p>calm</p><p>down.</p><p>—————</p><p>You are no longer on antibiotics, your consciousness is no longer stolen away by infection or fatigue. You are in a white room, you are starving, and you are bored.</p><p>Jacob has turned on the water to your sink and shower now that your wounds have healed enough that a soak won’t impede their healing. You no longer yearn for water, your skin has regained its elasticity, your piss a healthy shade of yellow.</p><p>Instead, Jacob withholds food from you, lets you suffer through growling stomach aches and gnawing hunger. Take to chewing the inside of your mouth and making meals of your own flesh and blood until you are raw from it. Watch your muscle mass dwindle along with the healthy layer of fat you had worked so hard to keep. Shrink down in size until you are thin in the way of a young male model, prettily muscled instead of usefully muscled. Look at your hands for hours at a time because they no longer seem to be your own.</p><p>It’s at your most despondent that Jacob comes to see you. Grapelling you down to the ground when the rage takes you and holding you as the song plays and you sink into a compliant exhaustion. He feeds you when you wait patiently, sitting on your sleeping bag in your clothes that have become too loose, and body that feels ill fitting.</p><p>He feeds you a bizarre combination of whole grain bread chunks and water filled shaker bottles weighed heavily with unmixed protein powder.</p><p>“Is this some sort of fetish thing?” You snarl at him once, after chugging down a chalky chocolate batch of Muscle Milk, the false sugar taste stronger than normal due to the additional scoops of powder they gave you.</p><p>He laughs at that and pulls the bottle from your hand. “No. You, hmm, you remember my trials? You remember what I preached against? What I hate?”</p><p>Roll your eyes and nod, “The weak are meat, the strong eat.”</p><p>“Very good. You’re a strong man, Deputy. Usually I’d use that, I have used that I imagine. But this time, we’re not playing that game are we? I’m not letting you fight, so here you don't need to be strong. But we can’t make you weak either.” His hand presses tight against your abdominals, and he leans in tight to your ear. “So I made you useless instead. Pretty, but useless.”</p><p>—————</p><p>Fight him after that, Fight him and fight him and fight him. Don't let him cross the threshold without suffering some sort of attack. You never win of course. Get piledrived into the ground each time, the song clicking on as he holds you there, hand tight against the back of your neck, limbs immobile under his weight.</p><p>Struggle and struggle and struggle until one day he slides a needle under your skin and depressed the plunger. Snarl until your muscles loose traction on your bones, and your ligaments fall loose, and you sink sludge like to the floor. Jacob remains crouched over you, knees to either side of your torso, a firm hand around the back of your neck.</p><p>His breathing is heavy, and he twitches his fingers against your skin. The classical song a steady dance of piano in your ear, meandering and slightly whimsical.</p><p>“You’re a college boy, right Deputy?” Jacob starts, “ I’m sure you took a basic psych class, everyone does. The human brain is a fascinating thing, once you start poking around in there… You’re familiar with the term “classical conditioning?”, you remember all those studies about Pavlov and Little Albert and the Mice?</p><p>“Sure, sure, you're familiar with it, personally too. All that time you must have spent in my maze… We’re trying something different now, you and I. Something soft and gentle.” He laughs, “No more fight.”</p><p>—————</p><p>No more fight turns into daily injections of muscle relaxant and song stimuli, turns into the song crackling through the speakers when Jacob isn't around and your knees getting wobbly beneath you, turns to you stutter stepping to the floor of your shower one morning when the song comes on unexpectedly.</p><p>Turns to you trying not to sob into the shower drain as your limbs remain jelly and don’t respond to your demands.</p><p>Wait for him quietly the next time he pulls open your door, and the next and the next.</p><p>—————</p><p>A month? A Few months? A year? Into your captivity, Jacob comes to you. He passes you a pair of boots and waits as you lace them over your too large jeans, that rest too low on your hips and only remain up due to a prayer and a hand holding tight to the inside of our pocket.</p><p>His eyes rove over you, cold and dismissing, before he waves a hand at the door and says, “Come on.”</p><p>He leads you through the hallway and down some stairs, and as you cut glances into the room you pass, you realize you’ve been in the Veteran’s Center this whole time. Keep tight to Jacob’s elbow when he leads you into the courtyard, still set up with the trial maze, and around the side of the building.</p><p>It’s full winter outside, and your feet crunch through week old snow, and you can't help but shiver against the chill, underdressed in new boots and a worn shirt.</p><p>Jacob leads you to the cages in the back lot, some holding Judges, others humans. You see Staci Pratt standing hunched by some of the humans, clipboard in hand, lips pressed tight together, eyes cut down.</p><p>Reach out for Jacob’s arm and press a quick hand to his elbow before drawing away. “How long…” Struggle to get the full sentence out.</p><p>“Been four months, end of January now.” He slings an arm around your shoulders and holds you close, like you’re old buddies as you walk past Staci. “Why? Thought you missed your birthday?”</p><p>Hunch under the weight of Seed’s arm and the shocked look that passes over Pratt’s face, his mouth forming your name in silent disbelief.</p><p>Shake your head and cut your eyes to the snow churned ground. “No… October, turned twenty three right before...right before John.”</p><p>Jacob hums and pulls you down through a walkway lined with cages until you are standing amidst the snarling of Judges and the high rumbling yowl of an angry cougar.</p><p>Stumble forward, out from under Jacobs arm and whimper. “No!”</p><p>Grab for the thick metal bars and stick your hand through just as thick arms wrap around your chest and yank you back. “The fuck are you doing!” Jacob growls, his voice getting caught under your howl of “Peaches!”</p><p>Your cougar turns to you, catches your face with her heterochromia eyes and snarls at you. Her teeth bare, sharp and white and vicious, and her paw swipes between the bars of her cage.</p><p>“The Judge serum did a good job with her.” Jacob says as he hold you tight to his chest. “Doubled her size, made her mean. Too mean really. Doesn't want to play well with my Hunters, with my wolves. Of course, we could always just dump her in the middle of a Resistance strong hold. Let her kill her way to her death.”</p><p>His breath is moist and hot against your neck, you can see the tail ends of it passing in white clouds in front of your eyes. “Please don’t. Please don’t.” You beg, wrap your fingers tight against his forearm. “I’ll be good, I promise, but don’t hurt her, please.”</p><p>In the franticness of your pleading, you miss the smile that smears its way across his face.</p><p>—————</p><p>It starts the next day. The great unraveling of you.</p><p>The music starts when you are doing pushups in the middle of your room. Sink down to the floor and lay there when your body refuses to shift up again. Breath slowly, and ease your head to the side, so you can better see Jacob when he comes through the door.</p><p>You have to wait awhile, wait three repetitions of the song, count along with the meandering piano as it starts again and again.</p><p>The door swings open and you see his worn boots first, the camel colored army drab affair that Veterans often like to keep even after their war. He walks in and kneels by you, sliding a hand under your shoulder and rolling you over. His face is stormy, his mouth set in a firm line, and you know something has happened, something has gone wrong and he chose to work it out on you.</p><p>Debate whether to ask him about it, but halt that thought when he grabs you under the armpits and drags you bodily to your sleeping bag. Kick your feet weakly as they drag along the ground and raise your hands to hold feebly at his wrists as he lays you down.</p><p>“What’s wrong?” you ask once he’s settled his weight above you, knees to either side of your thighs, hands pressed into the ground above your shoulder. Its is a particularly uncomfortable position to be in, staring eye to eye with Jacob Seed. Especially when considering the first time you had ever found yourself arranged like this, he tore your throat out with his teeth.</p><p>He ignores your question and asks, “About three more minutes until you can move fully again?”</p><p>He had timed the effect once, the song instilling a false paralysis for about five minutes.</p><p>“Thereabouts…”</p><p>He hums and tap tap taps his fingers across your ribcage. “Got a call from Joseph.” Jacob drawls, “He got... concerned for you after you went missing.”</p><p>Blink at him and don’t stop the confusion from spreading across your face. “Why would he care? I killed John, did my best to stop him...you.”</p><p>Tap tap tap go his fingers. “Joe thinks you have a place with us. That you belong to us, with us, at the end of this. That there is some ineffable bullshit that you connected to his visions.”</p><p>Shift beneath him as feeling comes back to your spine, brush your hands against the top of his boots on accident. “Oh… and?”</p><p>“I told him that I’ve had you this whole time, that you’ve been with me, undergoing little mind games, all safe and sound.”</p><p>Cold shivers roll down your spine and you shudder at his words. Draw your shoulders up tight and freeze beneath his stare. Freeze beneath the enjoyment he gets out of this power imbalance. Swallow and ask, “What did he say?”</p><p>Jacob grins at you and leans down close. “It’s time to welcome you to Eden’s Gate.”</p><p>—————</p><p>It starts with the recording, Joseph’s voice reading Joseph's gospel piping through the speakers of your room on endless repeat, just this side of too loud. It’s Jacob dragging you to the projector room and pumping you full of unknown chemicals that make your head spin and eyes bleed with color. Its endless slides, and words, and praise be, and endless repetition of the Book of Joseph. It is Jacob’s calloused hands holding you above a pool of your own vomit when the Bliss and drugs and colors become too much and you can't hold it in anymore.</p><p>It is Jacob pressing a bow into your hands, and muttering praises in that distant, uninterested tone that makes you both nauseous and terribly pleased.</p><p>It is Jacob and classical music and a body that forgets to respond. It is terror and manipulation, and a knife that cuts through your shirt and hands that pull away your too big jeans. It is hands that flip you over and prop you up, it is a bearded kiss that presses mockingly to your lips and hands that slide down your body until you are gasping and shaking and begging,</p><p>“Please don't! I’m not- I haven't!”</p><p>And it is a low chuckle and a “It’s okay, you’re okay, Pup.” that sends you grimacing against the sour lemon taste in your mouth and the unease in your stomach.</p><p>Then rough hands on your dick until you are hard with desire, and easy with want, hands on your dick until you are coming, and that's when Jacob slips a finger to the knuckle inside you. Lets your ass clench around him as he pulls the last bit of sperm from you and lays a trail of kisses down your spine.</p><p>It is again and again and again, until classical conditioning sets in. The day that Jacob presses a kiss to your lips and pushes a lubed finger inside you, you are hard hard hard without him even touching your dick is the day that he takes you. Is the day that he works you open and fucks you, is the day that you cum untouched with just his dick in your ass and his disinterested voice laying praises in your ear.</p><p>It is the day you break inside. You break inside, and you don't quite manage to put the pieces together right.</p><p>—————</p><p>It is late spring and the thaw has set in. The snow is wet and heavy, and the ground is thick with mud. It is you, and Peaches and the Whitetails. It is you, a bow, and your quarry.</p><p>You have been tracking them through the deep woods for the better part of two days. They keep trying to lose you by taking rock ledges, but the overwhelming amount of snow is their continual undoing.</p><p>The footprint they left is a clean, deeply grooved snow boot and female, based off the size of the shoe. You are getting close.</p><p>Pull an arrow from your quiver and notch it. Motion Peaches up ahead, and watch her prowl silently through the shrubbery. Step into a clearing at the base of a cliff and look up. Look up to where a green coated woman is staring down at you, compound bow in hand.</p><p>“Hey, Fucko.” She sneers before spitting a trio of arrows. Dive to the side and swing your own bow up, fire, and pull another arrow as she ducks and weaves beneath your attack. The arrow strikes rock and shatters, and Jess Black is throwing Molotovs at you. The damp snow doesn't catch, but the flaming oil causes a great distraction for the sniper up on the cliffs edge.</p><p>Take a bullet through the knee and another through the chest. Fall to your front and shudder against the cold snow that finds its way under your hood. Shake and shudder and bleed out, and hear the roar of your cougar and the echoing report of the gunshot that takes her down.</p><p>Gasp out your last breath into the fresh green of new spring grass and cool your cheek on compacted snow. Take an arrow through the eye.</p><p>—————</p><p>Come to with acid in your mouth. Push away from Joey just in time to twist your body and hurl. Cough up vomit that tastes like wheat and barley, and hack up phlegm and spit until your lungs are clear.</p><p>Let Sharky wrap his arms around your chest and pull you up and out of your own sick. Shudder as Hurk wipes your face with his bath towel blanket and swallow down the bitterness in your mouth.</p><p>Let your friend coddle you, and ply you with water and painkillers and clean up the mess you made. Thank them without meeting their eyes and fall silent for the rest of the morning.</p><p>—————</p><p>Two days later, you press the spare key to your apartment into Joey’s hand and head south to the very fringe of Hope County, to where moose become Judges and Bliss runoff collects.</p><p>Set up a tent, and a firepit, and live alone for as many months as it takes to die.</p><p>Spend countless days listening to the clatter of distant gunfire and endless nights staring into the surrounding blackness. Stare until your eyes make shapes of nothing and your shaking under the weight of your own horror. Fire blindly into the darkness and collect your scattered shell casings come dawn.</p><p>Beset on all sides by the memory of your failures, your shortcomings, the weaknesses inside of you that feed and feed and feed. So much that the criticisms of the day bleed into your nights and your nightmares become inundated with your downfall and the cold, slow smile of Jacob Seed. Put in your pennitance, suffer at your own hand and mind, go insane under the weight of your solitude.</p><p>You don't know what kills you in the end, just go down in a flash of heat.</p><p>—————</p><p>Buy a bow your forty ninth life. Buy a bow and leave your apartment keys and care directions for Boomer on your kitchen island. Know Joey will find them in the morning.</p><p>Leave Falls End on foot and trek north up the empty highway, spend the night at Rae Rae's farm, tucked into the dusty sheets of her guest room. Eat her canned food and leave before the sun comes up. Swim across the river to Dutch's territory and cross it before the old man can notice you on his security cams. At dusk, swim across the river to Joseph's compound. Find shelter amongst the bows of a felled pine tree and rest until the night is dark and the nocturnal beasts prowl.</p><p>Join them and stealth your way to the compound. Drop Chosen with arrows to the throat and knives to the gullet. Press open church doors with blood rich hands and step onto the old wooden planks. Joseph waits for you at the altar. Walk towards him and feel nothing. Say nothing even as he holds a hand out to you in greeting. "Welcome Deputy."</p><p>He steps towards you, face a painful combination of harsh sorrow and sour expectation.</p><p>"So you’ve come to kill me." Joseph says, his accent settling against your ears different in person than over recorded messages. "Was taking John not enou--"</p><p>“It can be. He can be.” Stop midway down the aisle, run your thumb over the grip of your bow. “We can end this with John, You don't have to lose the others. Please, Joseph, I want to stop."</p><p>"I--stop?" He freezes at the first row of pews, face contorting with incredulous confusion.</p><p>"Fighting. This civil war," you wave your hand between him and you,"between our people.<br/>What is it you want to fucking stop this?"</p><p>Joseph frowns at you, taken aback. He holds his arms wide, a gesture rife with religious connotation. "There is no stopping. The world is on the brink of collapse and--"</p><p>"Bullshit! The world has been on the brink of collapse for decades! It'll be on the brink of collapse tomorrow, and the next day, and the next until the fucking sun eats our planet!"</p><p>He steps towards you, eyes suddenly bright. “No! No, it's not bullshit, Deputy. You know it. you’ve seen it too, that society is broken, you know! Everything is coming to an end. It’s coming to an end sooner than you think, than you can conceive. I have seen what is coming Deputy. I have seen it, and I had to act.”</p><p>Sigh long, and sigh hard, try and release the weight of all your lives, of all you know, on the air hissing through your teeth. Place down your bow, rest it against the wooden pew beside you and take a step towards the Father.</p><p>“I don't want to argue this, Joseph. Please. Just--just tell me what you want to leave Hope County alone.”</p><p>“There is nothing you can give me Deputy.” Joseph's voice is low, subdued, the manic charisma has left him, he is regarding you as seriously as you are him. “Society has broken, and the only way forward, the only way I can see is to return to how things once were. Simple, pure, innocent. Safe and protected. I cannot do that without Eden’s Gate. I cannot save people without it.”</p><p>He steps forward and closes the distance between you. His hands reach for you, settling on your shoulders. “We don't have to fight, Deputy. We don't have to be enemies. We can save them, together.”</p><p>The Father looks at you, blue eyes turned green under yellow frames. "I want to save everyone. I can use your help."</p><p>Joseph’s hands raise off your shoulders, and you struggle to hold back your flinch as they nestle against your face and tilt your chin down so that your forehead can rest against his. “Together, there will be no more suffering. You can help us protect them. We can do better--”</p><p>“No.” Say it softly but cut him off all the same as you shake yourself loose from his embrace. “No-- there is no forgiveness, Joseph, no team up. You have harmed people, my people too deeply, I won't betray them for you, for this dream of yours. If you stop the violence, if you stop the Reaping, I can convince the Resistance to stand down, we can have a ceasefire, Joseph. But we can never have an alliance.”</p><p>You can see the anger flash over his face before he breathes out, he steps back, he nods. “Sometimes...the best thing to do is walkaway.”</p><p>Swallow, scrunch your eyes together and nod. “Alright.”</p><p>Pick up your bow and turn your back. Travel down the narrow aisle between the pews and stop at the church door, with all the graffiti scratched into its paint. “For what it’s worth, Joseph. I am sorry.”</p><p>Nock an arrow, turn and pull. Embed it between his eyes. Watch him fall, sloppily to his knees and then to his side. Watch the blood flow over fletching and down onto the worn, wooden planks. Watch Joseph Seed die</p><p>and feel nothing.</p><p>Leave the compound and head for Dutch’s bunker. Follow him down the concrete staircase and ask to use his long range radio. Switch the dial to All Channels and pick up the receiver. Breathe deep, breathe deep and say, “This is Deputy Rook. Joseph Seed is dead.”</p><p>Take your hand off the button and wait as transmissions flood in.</p><p>—————</p><p>Joseph Seed is dead, but the war is still going. The war is still going, and it is no longer holy.</p><p>Soldiers from the Whitetails and Blissed up Peggies from the Henbane come flooding into the Valley, they lay siege upon Falls End. They decimate your retaken outposts, your food stores, your citizens. Calls come in from Eli’s Whitetails and the Sheriff at the Prison, they say the two remaining Seeds have vacated their territories to take your own.</p><p>It is a war of attrition, and you are losing. It is a war without relief, and you are losing, will loose, have lost. Have lost Nick to Jacob’s helicopters, Hurk and Sharky to Angels, Jerome and Grace to the siege. You have warned Addie away, and have prayed that Peaches and Cheeseburger are safe. It is you and Joey, and Mary May and your dog, and the few remaining survivors. There are seven of you in total and you won't make it through the following day.</p><p>“I’m sorry.” You tell them after you have repelled an attack late into the evening. “I thought I could fix things. I thought it would work.”</p><p>“You did your best, Rook.” Mary May sighs as she leans against you.</p><p>Joey puts a hand on your shoulder and squeezes. The other four townspeople look at you with hollow eyes.</p><p>“Well, it's been fun.” Chip from the sporting goods store says. He brushes a hand through his greying beard. Once in your first life, he took out the plane that was bombing the town. These days, he has run out of RPGs and has settled for homemade mason jar bombs.</p><p>Jamila, who use to give wildlife expedition tours, sighs and leans against her sniper rifle. “Stop being so pessimistic, I’m too young to die.”</p><p>Take a deep breath and rub a bandaged hand over your face, smearing sweat and dirt into the already bloody fabric. “We can try a trade. Myself for your safety. Free passage to the jail?”</p><p>“Fuck off!” Joey snarls and shakes you, fingers digging into your shoulder hard enough to sting. “You’re not selling yourself to those fucks.”</p><p>“Why shouldn’t he!” Marci, once a mother of 2, now mother of none snaps. “It’s his fault we’re here in the first place. If he didn’t kill Joseph--!”</p><p>“If he didn’t Kill Joseph, we’d be dead anyway!” Mary May shoves her and your loose circle erupts.</p><p>Drag Mary May off and away, hold her as she squirms, catch her hair in her mouth and gag on the smoke saturated taste. “It’s okay, it’s okay, May.”</p><p>Wrap your arms around her and hold her tight. “We’ll decide what to do in the morning, okay? Chip, and I will take first watch.”</p><p>Set her down and give her a gentle shove towards Joey. Watch your group drift apart, and nod toward Chip before climbing to the sniper's perch that overlooks your half of the town. Settle in with a gun in your lap and binoculars in hand and scope out the surrounding farm fields until the sliver of moon is high in the sky.</p><p>Feel relief when thirty minutes before Jamila is supposed to come relieve you of watch, a hand presses hard against your mouth, a shoulder braces the back of your head as your chin is pulled up up up and a K-Bar is tugged across your throat.</p><p>Gasp into the hand over your mouth as you feel the yank in your windpipe and the agony that follows. Get dumped to the scrap metal floor and struggle to hold your throat together. Struggle aimlessly and needlessly, as Jacob Seed crouches in the spreading pool of your blood.</p><p>He stares at you while you are dying and then spits on your corpse.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Please leave a review!</p>
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<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Henbane</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Originally posted as 1 chapter, later split to help readability.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Wake up gently. Peel your eyes open and lay on the cheap hardwood of your apartment. Blink against the weight of yesterday’s (a multitude of lifetime’s) liquor, and breathe deep the scent of Joey’s hair. Wait and listen to Hurk’s snores and Sharky twitching on the couch behind you. Listen to Nick as he downs a handful of painkillers and the last swallow of orange juice. Watch as he fills a pot with water and starts the coffee. </p><p>Nick fusses in your kitchen while the drink brews, quietly opening drawers and cabinets and shutting them with a minute shake of the head. He huffs and presses a hand to the thick bandages wrapped around his chest and mutters a curse. </p><p>Watch him until the smell of coffee enters the air and Grace heaves herself out of the armchair with a groan. She rubs her eyes and stumbles towards the bathroom, and then toward the kitchen where she takes the mug Nick offers her. Its ocean blue and painted with false kintsugi, it was, at one time Sara’s favorite.</p><p>They talk quietly for a moment, sipping coffee and let their eyes fall over your recumbent forms. Hide your face in Joey’s hair before they notice you spying and curl into her form. Hold her close, and then let her go. There is something in your soul, in the brutal horror of your last three lives that sinks its teeth into you. </p><p>Know, deeply and without question, that you are afraid to lose them again. </p><p>—————</p><p>Your friends drag you to the local diner while giving you flack for having a kitchen stocked solely with coffee grounds and unbleached flour. </p><p>“It’s just sad, man.” Sharky shakes his head at you, as Hurk slides a four top against a booth and you all squeeze in. Find yourself sandwiched between a sleepy-eyed Addie and her aforementioned nephew. </p><p>“It’s not like grocery shopping has been high on my priorities.” You groan rolling your eyes. </p><p>“Rook, you live atop the local bodega. You have no excuse!” Joey accuses. </p><p>Frown at her and wave your hand in a broad sweeping circle. “Forgive me if deciding that taking down a cult while surviving multiple life or death gunfights was more important than--”</p><p>“Ooookaay then,” Nick interrupts, “Not that this isn't fascinating, but can we get to the matter at hand? Pancakes? Anyone down for pancakes?” </p><p>Joanie the waitress, 60 years old, unlit cigarette tucked into her grey beehive stares at you all in exasperation. She plants a carafe on the formica tabletop and grumbles. “We’re out of everything but eggs and griddle cakes. So that's what you’re going to get. Coffee’s the cheap stuff, but it's fresh, who wants a cup?” </p><p>You all hold out your cups, and she fills them, then wanders back to the kitchen to put in seven orders.</p><p>“Uch,” Kim groans, her hands flying to her stomach, “Baby’s kicking. I am so ready for her to get out already.” </p><p>“He will come out in his own time, Kim.” Nick sighs around the white ceramic mug in his hand.</p><p>“She could hurry things up a bit.” Kim grouses, and then smiles at Hurk’s puppy dog face, before pulling his hand to her stomach and letting him feel the pulsing kicks.</p><p>“You’ll miss this when she's born, Sweetheart. “ Addie laughs, “Enjoy being able to sleep while you can, the next three years will be full of rough awakenings.” </p><p>“Don't say that. Please don't say that.” Nick groans into his hands. </p><p>“Welcome to fatherhood.” Sharky grins, “We were still splitting rent when my sister had her twins. God, we didn't sleep for weeks. Two of us were up constantly, feeding, bathing, cleaning up, endlessly washing clothes. Dude, you cannot imagine how messy babies are.”  </p><p>Your food comes out just as Nick begins to stress about baby clothes. Add finding more infant outfits to your to-do list as you soak your griddle cakes in syrup.<br/> <br/>—————</p><p>Head to the Henbane with Sharky and Hurk in tow and drive straight for the prison in Sharky’s old SUV. Have him stop the jeep around the time you hear gunfire, and pull your assault rifle into your hands. “We’ll go in hard and fast, we need to get behind the jail walls before the Peggie reinforcements show. Hurk, put as many rounds into their trucks as you can manage. Sharky, watch his back.” </p><p>“Sounds good, amigo.” Hurk nods while checking the ammo satchel his has on his hip, a good 15 rounds waiting inside it.</p><p>Sharky nods at you and you lead them down well memorized paths, to break the siege on the Hope County Jail. </p><p>Feel just as warm as always, when half an hour later, Sheriff Whitehorse places his hands on your shoulders and squeezes, his honest joy at seeing your face eases old worries inside of you.</p><p>Remeet Tracey and Virgil, gather missions from them, and pop onto the jail’s longwave radio. Turn first to Addie’s channel and wait for her to pick up.</p><p>“What’s up, baby boy?” She sighs into the receiver, in the way she does after a good round of sex with Xander. </p><p>“Hey, Mama,” You play along, “ I was hoping you could do me a favor?”</p><p>“Well sure, Sweetheart. What is it?” </p><p>“Sheriff's saying Faith has a bunch of Shrines hidden around the Henbane. Think you can take the Tulip up and destroy them for me?”</p><p>She laughs and purrs into the radio. “In a heartbeat, so long as you come see my boy for some yoga.” </p><p>“Deal.” You say before signing off and twisting the dial for Nick’s channel.</p><p>It’s Kim who picks up and accepts your request in lieu of her husband. She’ll put Nick on destroying Faith’s drugboats as soon as he’s up from his nap, she promises, and then signs off with a cheery goodbye.</p><p>Turn to Sharky and Hurk and say, “You two down for saving Doc Lindsay?”</p><p>—————</p><p>You have been in the Henbane for just short of a month when the Bliss overwhelms you. The green gas settles heavy in your lungs and wraps your eyes in distraction. Know in a distant sort of way that you have grown susceptible to the Bliss after lifetimes of exposure. Some sort of psychosomatic effect, you would argue if your brain was anywhere near functioning, but instead  as you pull yourself out of the drug infused water of the Treatment Plant, the shock of an oncoming flood of Bliss into your system nearly undoes you. Press your skull against the concrete floor and shut your eyes, gagging against the overwhelming stench. </p><p>Bliss nauseates you down to the core these days. Your body reacting to what must amount to years of mistreatment under the drug’s power. Spit suga- tinged saliva and pull the clinging cotton of your shirt over your head. Toss it with a soggy splat into the corner of the room, and let your nervous system fall to pieces. </p><p>Shake and shudder, and dry heave as your body protests. Feel your heart frantically pumping blood by the hummingbird pulse in your neck and keen as blackness starts to encroach upon your vision. </p><p>Feel rough hands press against your face as a body dives into place beside you. The weight of them knocking you prone from your hunched position on the ground. </p><p>“Ah, shit.” They say, and their hands flutter to your pulse points, and then try to peel up an eyelid as you thrash beneath them. </p><p>They throw a leg over you and try to force you still under their body weight. “Calm down, it’s okay, it’s okay, I got you, oh fuck fuck fuck.” </p><p>In their struggle to hold you still, the soft fabric of their shirt presses to your face. Pass out overwhelmed by the scent of accelerant and phosphorus. </p><p>—————</p><p>Come to on the couch in Dutch’s bunker, the older man crouching beside you while he wipes Bliss residue off your skin with a dampened cloth. He pauses his ministrations when he sees your eyes peel apart. “Hey, Kid.” Dutch greets in that rough way of his.</p><p>Breath heavily and go limp, his voice wrapping around you warmly, the sound of it so deeply ingrained with help and support in your subconscious that you can't find it within you to fuss under the weight of his hands or the tight plastic loops holding your wrists and ankles together.</p><p>He draws the cloth down the curve of your shoulder and dips it into the bucket at your side. “Boshaw brought you here.” Dutch says as he squeezes water from the rag, and glances back your way. “About sixteen hours ago.”</p><p>He huffs out a breath and wipes at your arm. “Had a hard time getting you here from the sound of it. Bliss makes you mean.”</p><p>Tilt your head toward him and squeeze your palms together. “Did I hurt him?” You rasp out.</p><p>“Charlemagne’s got a hell of a shiner. Other bruises of course, but less than there could be.” </p><p>Swear under your breath and try to hide your face with your hands, but Dutch grabs you by the wrist and drags your arms down. “None of that until we get the rest of this shit off of you. Can’t have you expose yourself again and go all fucking Angel on us.” </p><p>Swallow hard and shudder, “M’sorry.”</p><p>“I know kid.” His hand brushes down the side of your face and comes to rest on your shoulder. “Boshaw knows it too. We just got to keep you out of that shit for a while. Okay? No more Henbane. We can’t fucking loose you.” </p><p>—————</p><p>Hole up in Dutch’s bunker for days. Drown yourself in his shower until your skin is free of any taint of Bliss and pruney besides. Huddle in borrowed clothes and tug nervously at the too-short sleeve of Dutch’s sweatshirt as you radio Sharky and apologize for trying to kill him.</p><p>“It’s all good, Bro, it wasn't you.” He says over the staticy connection of the long range, “I mean-- it was but not like you, you. Look. Just bring the beer next time we roast some Angels and I’ll call it good, okay man?”</p><p>He signs off and let’s you know he’ll come by the next time you need some help, so you better fucking call him, okay?</p><p>Chew the sweatshirt’s drawstring as you pick you way through the rooms of the bunker, and spit it out the moment you run into Dutch, and he gives you the stink eye.</p><p>“Look kid. It’s not that I'm not happy to host your overgrown ass, but I've got chatter about Peggie moving their forces on the radio. Chatter that can use your particular brand of attention.”</p><p>He raises an eyebrow at you, and you nod, duck your head at the rising shame that crawls pink across your face.</p><p>“Things have been quiet down south since you took out John, and the Henbane’s off limits.” Dutch waves you into his war room and taps his finger against the map on the wall. “Eli’s people have been sending me word about Jacob starting something new up in the Whitetails. Word is is that it’s fairly Bliss free up there. You should be safe.”</p><p>Freeze up as soon as he says ‘Eli’. Freeze and shiver against the cold sweat that’s broken out across your back and swallow down the fear that rises in your throat. “I--yeah…”</p><p>Tuck your trembling hands under your armpits and hunch in on yourself as Dutch narrows his eyes at you. “Kid?” He asks slowly, voice dropping low as he regards you.</p><p>“Is there--is there anything in the Valley? It’s just um…” </p><p>“I can find something...if that’s what you want. But Kid--Rook, did something happen?”</p><p>—————</p><p>Take Peaches south with you, and pretend that the thought of heading north doesn't fill you with stomach churning dread. Doesn't make your hands shake, or your spine go cold and nerveless. Doesn't make your breath shudder out past your teeth and your eyes stare unseeing for endless minutes. </p><p>Struggle to convince yourself you aren’t avoiding the Whitetails and know it’s a lie.</p><p>—————</p><p>Futz around in the Valley for a week, taking out the remaining cultists who held scattered resistances across the farmland. Meet, and then promptly ignore, Larry Parker when you realize he’s more mad scientist than mad scientist. Call Addie to take you south to Judge Moose territory and snipe the tainted animal from on high. Don’t land to skin the beast, but drop molotovs onto the infected corpses until they have burned to ash. </p><p>Let Addie convince you to return with her to the Marina with the promise that she’ll fly you South again before the night ends. Drink smoothies and let Xander lead you through yoga practice while Adelaide oogles your ass.</p><p>Let her press a kiss to your forehead when she drops you off in Falls End that night. Try and pass off the hesitation in her eyes as anything but worried. “Take care of yourself, okay sweetheart?” Addie says before getting back into her helicopter. “You’re too young for your hair to be going grey.”</p><p>Wave at her as she lifts off, and then climb the narrow staircase to your apartment. Stare at yourself in the bathroom mirror, and raise a wavering hand to the silver crawling into your hairline. </p><p>—————</p><p>Dutch calls you late that night. His voice sounding hard and stressed even with the interference of a thunderstorm rolling through Hope County.</p><p>It’s his niece, you see, Jess Black. She’s a good girl, been causing trouble for Jacob’s Peggies these last few months. But she’s missing, hasn’t made her radio check in for days. He doesn't want to ask you this, but you’re the only one he trusts.</p><p>Swallow down the bile rising in your throat and say. “I’ll look into it.”</p><p>—————</p><p>Take Peaches and Grace with you into the Whitetails. You want to go quiet, go ghost until you can get the fuck out of there. Change your usual load out to a silenced sniper, and the quietest silenced submachine gun you have. Pull a bow and quiver across your shoulders, and check that your knives slide easily from their sheaths. Spit bile into your sink and go mute under the fear that builds within you. </p><p>Carefully lead them up the winding mountainous paths until you’re overlooking the Saw Mill. Scope out the Peggies below, marking their distribution to Grace as she counts along through the scope of her rifle. Peaches hunkers down by your side, eyes intense, and body wiggling with anticipation. </p><p>Motion to Grace and take a deep breath before aligning your eye with the scope of your rifle. Pull the trigger simultaneously with your partner and drop two Peggies. Slowly rotate your sight and drop another, and another, until they have wised up and have hidden themselves too well to be picked off. </p><p>Pull a knife from your hip and touch Peach’s shoulder. “We’re going in.” You whisper, before you disappear down the slope and sneak through a gap in the chain link. </p><p>Wash your hands in blood that day. Find yourself swimming in it when Jess leads you on a revenge quest after the Butcher. </p><p>—————</p><p>You have just picked up Cheeseburger from the building supply site when Jacob’s voice slithers out of your radio. </p><p>“Someone’s out there playing soldier,” he says, “Someone is out there playing soldier, and my hunters are coming.”</p><p>Turn pinprick eyes to Jess and stare at her. Her face has gone pale in return, and she grabs your sleeve in her hand before giving it a firm tug. “Come on. I know a place.”</p><p>She turns quickly and leads you on a grueling pace through the woods, up cliff faces and mountainsides, until you are huddled in the cave of one Bo Adams and trembling with exertion. </p><p>Bo himself has taken a seat outside the cave, tending to the cookfire and keeping a weather eye on the horizon. Jess has settled into the ground beside you, her arm pressing lightly against yours as she stretches her legs out with a groan.</p><p>Cheeseburger has taken up the majority of the cave entrance with his bulk and is happily resting his shovel shaped head in your lap and licking protein bar crumbs off your fingers with an overlong tongue.  </p><p>“So what's your deal then?” Jess grunts out eventually. </p><p>“My deal?”</p><p>She rolls her eyes and turns her tone into something cutting. “With Jacob? I know why I hate him but you?”</p><p>Fist your hands and let your ragged nails bite into the skin of your palm, tilt your head back and choke, “We’ve met”, through clenched teeth.</p><p>Feel, and do not see Jess nod by your side. “Alright then...since you’ve met, how badly do you want to keep from meeting him again?”</p><p>Turn to her and look her dead in the eye, “I’d rather you kill me.”</p><p>“Okay.” She says as her face blanks, “Okay.” </p><p>—————</p><p>Jess doesn't though, when the Hunters finally catch up. Instead she knocks an arrow and sends it through a Judge’s eye. She ignores the Hunter that takes you down with a Bliss arrow through the thigh. She misses her next shot, and your bear is too busy chasing off a pack of direwolves to halt the van they drag you into. </p><p>You struggle as long as you can, but the Bliss takes a vicious hold of you these days, it knocks you down, and you’re out for the count. </p><p>Your out until your in a red room, and there is a projector, and there is Jacob, and there is </p><p>O</p><p>N</p><p>L</p><p>Y</p><p><br/> Y</p><p>O</p><p>U</p><p>—————</p><p>The Whitetail Militia save you just like they always do. They pull you off the blood stained ground and drag you away from the other corpses. Take you back to the Wolf’s Den and treat your injuries, stick an IV in your arm, and let you pass out on the worn leather couch in their common room. </p><p>Remain there until a hand slides into yours and squeezes. Flinch away from the pressure and yank your eyelids open, hand snapping to your chest. </p><p>Gasp for air as your eyes adjust from their sleep heavy blur and see Jess Black’s scarred face leaning over you.</p><p>“Hey, Dep.” She greets, voice subdued. “You need to get up okay? We’re heading into coma territory and I heard their medic start to talk about catheters.”</p><p>Don’t try to hide the shudder that passes through your body at her words, just press your fingers to your eyes and dig out the eye boogers. </p><p>Jess fits her hands under your shoulders and helps guide you into a seated position before moving in and taking a seat by your side, her thighs pressing against yours.</p><p>Her hands wrap together and she lets out a heavy breath of air. “I’m sorry. You told me...and I didn’t listen…”</p><p>Let her stew in silence for a minute before sighing out, “Eli got me out before anything...before.” Nudge her with your knee. “Your doing?”</p><p>“Yeah. ‘Soon as Cheese and I got away. I knew where the militia was holed up, and I booked ass to get here. But uh, took a while to convince them to go looking for you, y’know? Friends become enemies in the Whitetails everyday, and not a single one of them knew you from Adam. I, uh, set Dutch on them, actually. You should have heard the old man tear them to pieces.” </p><p>An amused smile crosses her lips at that. </p><p>“Thanks, Jess.” You say, the tension bleeding from you, “How long did they have me?”</p><p>“Five days. Took a while to get a game plan to break into the Veteran’s Center. Had to wait for Jacob to leave with the bulk of his Chosen.” </p><p>Nod at that and push yourself to your feet. “Cheeseburger safe?”</p><p>“He’s fine, up above ground sleeping off a fisherman's breakfast.” </p><p>Pat her on the shoulder and wander towards the bunker’s bathroom. You have five days of blood, dirt and fear to wash off. </p><p>—————</p><p>Speak with Eli and Wheaty and Tammy. Gather their missions and pack yourself a new survival kit using the Whitetail’s military surplus. Take a 1911 sidearm and the ubiquitous AK-47 after you bully a silencer out of their armory staff before gathering Jess and your bear and heading east into the mountains. Take out Peggies as you reclaim radio towers, and pull gear from their bodies like wheat from chaff. </p><p>Move westward and let your ears guide you toward the dying elk screams of Wolf Beacons. Toss dynamite at their base and skitter away before they explode. Wind your way through the dense forest, until you meet up with Dr. Sarah Perkins and take on her request to capture a Judge for study. Escort her to the Breakthrough Camp and wave Jess in to silently take out the two Judge handlers on property. </p><p>Then drop bloody chunks of meat that lead into the waiting cage. Wait safely atop a low hanging roof for the wolves to enter and jump down to latch the gate shut. </p><p>Shake hands with the wildlife researcher, and then turn away to raid the campground for the MRE packs Jacob’s Peggies exist on. Stuff three meals worth into your pack and eat a forth on a blood specked table. </p><p>You’re halfway through some Vegetarian Crumbles with Pasta in Taco Sauce when your radio clicks to life. </p><p>“Y’know Deputy…if it were up to me--” </p><p>Cut off Jacob’s voice with a quick flick on the volume. Wipe your hand across your mouth and pull your bag across your shoulders. Lead Jess and Cheeseburger south and west until you are crossing the stream that demarcates Faith’s Territory from the Whitetail’s, and hold your middle finger to the Hunters that crash through the forest after you. </p><p>You don't let them live afterwards, of course, but it feels good all the same.</p><p>—————</p><p>You’re on your way to Sharky’s place to bed down for the night when a Faith apparition appears beside you. She swirls and twirls, and each rotation of her white dress spills out the heavy scent of Bliss.</p><p>“Hello, Deputy.” She says, stepping towards you on dancer’s feet. She smiles and giggles, and your brain tricks you into feeling the gentle breeze of lace against your jeans. Faith’s hand finds your own, and she steps in front of you, free hand raising to her mouth as she blows out.</p><p>“Welcome to the Bliss.”</p><p>Your eyesight floods black, and once you manage to blink the darkness away, you are in a field of flowers. It is so sunny as to be hazy, the world blurring in your periphery. Your nose is awash in floral scent, sweet and heady in the warmth of your hallucination. </p><p>Faith holds your hand in hers, gently, her palms soft and unmarred by callous and the wear and tear of the conflict. She smiles up at you, so, so bright. “You were gone for such a long time.” She sighs, “I didn't think you were coming back.”</p><p>“I needed to stay away,” you say with a shrug, but you let her pull you along down a narrow deer path through the sparkling woods.</p><p>“I know you have your doubts.” she starts again, “but this is the right way. You have to believe that. We’re not doing this to be mean, or contrary, or because we are misguided, we do what we do because we must. Because if we don't, then the story ends, and it ends wrong.”</p><p>“How do you see this ending?” You ask her because out of all the Seed Siblings excluding Joseph, Faith is the one with the most faith. She believes in the project, deeply, wholeheartedly, and in all honesty, with foolish devotion. </p><p>She stops and faces you with a frown pulling gently at her lips. Her eyes look up at you, hazel, and oh so big, and you wonder how it was Joseph managed to weaponize the softness in this girl. </p><p>“There will be fire.” She says, mouth wavering into a soft smile, “but then there will be rebirth! There will be hardship, but there will be survivors. There will be people who thrive, and it will be so because of Joseph, because of his Word. Deputy...Rook, please. There is a world out there that you never dreamt possible. Let me show you.”</p><p>Her hands form around yours, tight and unyielding, and gently warm like a blanket fresh from the dryer. She pulls, and the two of you are breaking through the fabric of reality, breaking through the liminal space of the Bliss, and something new forms around you. </p><p>Stand under the spreading boughs of a giant oak with leaves like Sakura blossoms. Stand, and look down upon the gathering of faces that look up up up at you with nothing but love in their eyes and goodness in their hearts. There is a simplicity to their dress and a rustic sense to the buildings that sketch into life behind them. </p><p>Their mouths are open, and they are singing but you don’t know the words, just find yourself caught in a chorus of hallelujahs.</p><p>Faith steps forward, and with your hand in hers, tugs you down with her. Through the throngs of singing people, into the sporadically placed buildings and beyond the wooden walls that house the small community.</p><p>Step beyond the safety of those walls and enter a hellscape of fire scorched trees and scalded dirt. To animals who are more bone than flesh, and humans with empty eyes and mouths like gaping caverns. Step into a world filled with horror and sickness, and perversity, and wake up in a field of Bliss flowers. Wake and freeze at the sudden shock of it, the sudden ending, the sudden lack of everything. Wake up in a field of Bliss flowers with dusk falling overhead, your rifle at your side, and a steady ache growing in the core of you. </p><p>Push yourself up and grab your gun with hands that palsy, and stumble on shaky legs down the hill to the old prison. </p><p>Enter those concrete halls and let Earl Whitehorse pull you tight to his chest. Let him towel away the pollen that clings to your skin and sit by your side on a prison cot gentling away the gaping wound of Bliss withdraw with the cadence of his quiet voice.</p><p>—————</p><p>Spend two days at the prison ducking under concerned looks from Whitehorse, avoid conversation with Tracey so she won't pull you into a new scheme to liberate territory from the Peggies, and sneak past Virgil's office, the weight of his son's gaze from the poster pinned lovingly to the wall still hits you like a blackhole even these fifty lives in.</p><p>Spend two days at the prison, huddled over the topography maps of the Henbane. Trace mountainsides with your fingers and press push pin markers into locations you know. Gather information and plot courses until you have narrowed the location of Faith’s bunker to two places. Fill your ammo supply at the jail’s commissary and make room for a few extra explosives. </p><p>Pull your submachine gun into your arms and boost a car from the motor pool. Drive carefully up and down the curving mountain roads until you are nearly at your location and have hit a Peggie roadblock. </p><p>Step out of your car with your hands held loosely and openly at your sides. Call out to the twitchy fingered priestess who glares you down across the blacktop.</p><p>“I’m here to see Faith.” You say. “I’m ready to join her in the Bliss.”</p><p>—————</p><p>Faith is so happy to see you when her guards lead you through the Bliss heavy hallways of her personal Eden to the antechamber within. Her garden of plenty and poisonous air. </p><p>"Deputy! You've come!" She cries at you, pleasure brightening her words, and her voice wraps around you tight, just as her fingers thread into yours and squeeze gently. "I knew you would! I knew you'd see!"</p><p>Her teeth are white and bright, and her mouth is shaded by gentle lips that no longer tremble when faced by wicked men or the various evils of the world. She is sure in her safety, in the power and protection of her god and the sheltering wings of Joseph's words.</p><p>She is so convinced of her power and the blinding grip of her Bliss that she doesn't think to ask her Faithful to stay, just waves them out of the room with a smile and a gentle word. She doesn’t seem to care that you have only been disarmed in the most cursory of ways, have found yourself bereft of your firearms and grenades and the most obvious of the knives hidden upon your person.</p><p>Not that you need a weapon to kill her, you hands do that job just fine.</p><p>It's so very easy to do, you see. She opens herself to you under the guise of friendship and shared delusions. Opens herself thinking her words have swayed you, have softened, tempered the beast inside you, despite the fact her brother marked you wrath and so like wrath you must be. </p><p>Wrap your hands around Faith's throat and hold tight, kill her gently, and all alone. From safe within her bunker, Faith has never learned the first rule of Whitetails, has never benefited from her eldest brother's teachings, has never learned that friends cannot be trusted, that they will turn on you despite themselves, that betrayal can't be helped, it is inevitable.</p><p>Lay her body on the grass covered concrete of her bunker. Tuck her hair behind her ear and press a kiss to your fingertips, then touch your hand to her forehead. Feel guilty despite the necessity. Feel ashamed for killing a girl, a child who fell prey to the manipulations of an older man. Who knew no better, and wished no harm, who just wanted an escape from the horrors of life and the quicksand trap of mistakes. Kill a girl for her belief, and her hope and dreams, then set fire to the weaponized air around you. Burn the flowers crawling up the walls, and plant explosives beside holding tanks, and destroy the bunker with prejudice. For all that you like her, Faith is also the source, and you cannot stand the thought of Bliss any longer.</p><p>Emerge from the bunker trailing smoke laced with poison and plant matter. Step forth and stand back, and watch as the inferno grows, as the fire feeds itself, and eats away the corpses left inside. Watch as the Bunker becomes a crematory, and wait for the prison to send vehicles to scout the source of the fire. </p><p>Sit and wait, watching the world burn, and wish, just this once that you were burning with it. </p><p>—————</p><p>Whitehorse comes for you like you always knew he would. He slides from the battered passenger door of an old prison transport and steps cautiously up to where you have settled yourself, back against the concrete barrier looking towards the guttering fire. </p><p>“You alright then, Rook?” He asks when he comes to a stop to your left and slightly behind, leaning his elbows against the concrete road barrier just above your head. He hovers over you, but it doesn’t feel oppressive, or nerve wracking, just calming, like any old day at the office where he stops by your cubicle and leans in for a chat.</p><p>“I’m okay, boss.” You lie because it is expected of you and honestly easier to say than the truth.</p><p>Killing Faith, disposing of her, the way you did, unsettled you. Killing someone by the force of your hands, killing someone who was known to you, who actually had a name, who wasn’t just some unknown face amidst a sea of plenty has unsettled you. Has shaken you down to the core where you had thought there was nothing left to tremble. </p><p>The Sheriff stares at you for a long moment, mouth twitching like he was going to call you on your lie before he exhales heavily and takes a moment to resettle his cowboy hat on his head. “You didn’t happen to see the Marshall, did you?”</p><p>Pause at that, let his words hit you like a truck, like a linebacker running all out. Find your self reeling from it.</p><p>The Marshall. You think, mind flashing with images of a smug face, gold chain and cocky manner.</p><p>The FUCKING Marshall. You realize.</p><p>“I-no, I…” </p><p>Whitehorse sighs and steps around the barrier, he plants a hand on your shoulder and takes a knee at your side. “Yeah, it’s okay, son.” His hand squeezes you firmly, and the action draws your eyes to his. “There’s been no real word of him. Just...I had hoped, you know.”</p><p>Nod and place your hand over his, give it a firm pulse of pressure. “Joey’s safe, and I know where Pratt… We can get Pratt back too, Boss, promise.”</p><p>“Good.” He rises to his feet with a wince and offers his hand. You take it, and he yanks you up and steadies you when the blood goes rushing through the previously locked muscles of your legs. “It’s time we head home, son. Let's let the others deal with cleanup.”</p><p>His hand falls upon your elbow, and gently he leads you forward. Presses you into the passenger seat of his truck and drives you away. Down the twisting blacktop of mountain roads that have gone silent in the wake of your destruction of Faith’s Gate. Past Bliss barrels that stand empty along the road side, spilling ichor from bullet holes punched into their plastic, past shattered groups of Peggies, surrendering to armed Cougars with hands raised into the air, past fields of Bliss flowers blaze alight under the steady stream of liquified Napalm.</p><p>At the end of things, Faith was right. The world does end in fire.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Please leave a review!</p>
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<a name="section0005"><h2>5. The Bliss</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Originally posted as 1 chapter, later split to help readability.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>You wake up in an open jail cell, and the morning doesn’t feel like victory. Doesn’t feel much like anything really, aside from a reminder of how sore your muscles are, and how stiff you become when you sleep on those old, too narrow cots. </p><p> </p><p>Pull on fresh clothes and limp down the concrete hall and into the old cafeteria. Brush past Cougars filling go-bags, and Cougars plotting routes on maps, and Cougars spooning rehydrated eggs into their mouths with displeased frowns.</p><p> </p><p>Brush past them to the exit that will lead you to the outer yard and grab for the door just as it pushes open. Find yourself face to face with Mayor Minkler, his face going from surprised to delighted at the sight of you. “Deputy Rook!” Virgil grins, hand closing around yours, perfectly firm and dry.  A politician’s handshake with none of the sleaze. </p><p> </p><p>“It’s good to see you! I can't believe you managed to ruin Faith’s day like you did. My goodness, you’ve made a huge change in the Henbane with just that. We’ll have this place under full Cougar control before the week’s end!” </p><p> </p><p>He doesn’t explicitly say thank you, but by this point, you have gotten used to being thanked for doing terrible deeds. It used to bother you, but now you just shrug at his praise and smile a lower watt smile than the one you practiced for hours on end and say, “I can't wait to see it back the way it should be.”</p><p> </p><p>Which admittedly, is kind of lame, but you were never much good with people, and you know Virgil has one love left in this world, and that is his love for Hope County. </p><p> </p><p>He grins at you and nods. “Oh yes, oh yes, we’ll have Hope back in tip-top shape. You have my word, Deputy.” And he opens his mouth to say something else, but a hand falls hard on your shoulder, and you nearly jump out of your skin. Flinching away from the sudden pressure so hard you bang into the metal door jamb and knock out the feeling in your arm. </p><p> </p><p>“Jesus, kid.” Whitehorse says from behind you, frowning deeply with his eyebrows pulled tight in concern. </p><p> </p><p>“I- it’s my bad, I’m sorry.” You grunt as you rub your hand across your afflicted elbow. </p><p> </p><p>The Sheriff reaches out for you slowly, telegraphing his move and placing his hand against the muscles of your back. “I hope you don’t mind if I steal my officer for a while, Virgil.” And your boss presses against your back, and you step through the doorway into the mid morning sunshine, your nose stained by the scent of distant fires. The scent memory of neighbors burning leaves in the fall bubbles up, the acrid powder scent heavy in the air. </p><p> </p><p>Whitehorse leads you to a distant corner of the yard where two white plastic lawn chairs have been placed around a wooden box. The legs of the chair have sunk into the dirt, and you know by the sight of them that this isn’t a new set up. </p><p> </p><p>With a groan, the Sheriff sinks into one of the chairs, and works to unscrew the top of a thermos he had in hand. He pours two styrofoam cups with coffee and digs around in his coat pocket for a moment before pulling forth a silver mylar wrapped bar which he hands to you.</p><p> </p><p>Take it, and peel away the crinkling plastic to reveal chocolate laced granola. Nibble at the end and eye him with growing trepidation as he blows on his steaming drink.</p><p> </p><p>“I know this isn’t the conversation you want to be having,” He starts,” but I think we need to talk all the same.”</p><p> </p><p>Duck away from his gaze by turning yours to the prison yard. Swallow hard and wait for him to continue without giving him any acknowledgement that you heard.</p><p> </p><p>“I know this hasn’t been easy on you. That we’ve asked a lot of you these past few weeks. That we’ve asked too much from you and that we’ll keep asking for too much. But I’m worried.” then he says your name, says your real name, pulls your attention from the ground to his face with a few simple syllables. “I need you to talk to me, okay? I know you’re not alright, I know that. But I need you to tell me how to help you.”</p><p> </p><p>Stare at him, stare at him and crinkle the empty wrapper of your granola bar. “Sheriff,” you sigh, “at the expense of sounding like a whiney teen, there isn’t anything you <em>can</em> do to help me. I mean, beyond what you are doing already. This isn’t going to get better untill we’ve dealt with this fucking cult.”</p><p> </p><p>He reaches for you, body angling towards yours, hand landing heavy on your knee. He looks like he’s going to say something, but you just continue talking.</p><p> </p><p>“I appreciate what you’re doing here. Really. But it’s just… It’s not something you <em>can </em>fix.” </p><p> </p><p>“Rook—” He tries again, but you shake your head and grab for your coffee, hide your face in the over brewed liquid and ignore his attempts to continue.</p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>Jacob’s hunters are waiting for you the next time you enter the Whitetails. They fall upon you in droves, and you leave a trail of red and black covered bodies through the wilderness before their arrows finally bring you down. </p><p> </p><p>Wake up in Jacob’s clutches for the second time this life, and settle in for seven long days of starvation. They have you in a cage, thick metal bars, ceiling too short to stand up in fully, probably some sort of repurposed animal transport.</p><p> </p><p>In the moldering straw that was hastily scattered around the metal flooring is your cellmate, the Whitetail with the stutter you had met so many lives ago at Eli’s bunker. You push yourself up with arms still wobbly from the Bliss arrow and drag yourself against the bars by his side.</p><p> </p><p>“Hey.” You grunt, closing your eyes against the wooziness that overcomes you, settling against him.</p><p> </p><p>He grunts back and curls into you, capturing your body heat in the cooling mountain air. It is deep into fall, over two months after you were sent to arrest Joseph Seed, and the weather is changing for the worst. Most mornings are greeted with a hard frost that leaves Bliss flowers without their telltale petals, but still potent with pollen, and nights that edge below freezing with each passing day.</p><p> </p><p>Breathe in the sweat and blood scent of your companion and close your eyes. Settle in and wait. </p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>The thing about Jacob... The thing about the second trial is… The thing…</p><p> </p><p>You have been at the Veteran’s Center for nine days. You have been going without food and water for eight of them. Without company for half of that, your Whitetail companion having been taken on day four and never returned, never replaced. </p><p> </p><p>Your stomach is strangling your spine. Your abdomen sits tight against your back, and your skin sticks to your muscles like plastic wrap on frosted cake. Your tongue has been desert dry and sandpaper rough against the roof of your mouth since day three, your voice, if not entirely gone from you, is little more than a whisper of wind over sand. Your eyes are dry and bloodshot, your head is swimming, and your muscles weak. </p><p> </p><p>You can hardly move from your collapsed state, face pressed into hard metal and mildew ridden straw. </p><p> </p><p>The thing is. The thing is, you see, is that the second trial is supposed to last seven days. Jacob is supposed to come gloat, Joseph is supposed to tell you the story of his wife and child, you are supposed to be thrown into the maze to kill kill kill. </p><p> </p><p>It’s supposed to be personal. </p><p> </p><p>It’s supposed to <em>mean</em> something. </p><p> </p><p>You aren’t supposed to be left here to die.</p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>It's the evening of the tenth day when they finally come for you.</p><p> </p><p>Jacob places a bowl at the far end of the cage and steps back to wait. He expects a mad scramble for the dog dish, for you to stuff yourself with the ground beef and boiled oat mix and for you to heave it back up when the raw meat hits your stomach and rebels against the empty space. </p><p> </p><p>He doesn’t expect your slow blink, the disjointed twitch of your tongue across cracked and shredded lips, nor the uncoordinated heave you make to sit up against the bars at your back.</p><p> </p><p>Air hisses through your teeth instead of words, your throat, nor your lips, nor your tongue are up to forming words. Glare at Jacob until you black out, until a blink later, Joseph is by his side, framed by thick metal bars. </p><p> </p><p>“You went a bit too far.” Joseph says, but he doesn’t scold, just states it blandly, like it’s just a fact, uninteresting in its commonality.</p><p> </p><p>“He deserves worse.” Jacob responds, “He took John, now Faith. You should just let me kill—“</p><p> </p><p>Joseph raises his hand, places it firmly on his brother’s bicep, the other rising to the back of his head, to pull the older man down into a forehead kiss. “We need him, I promise. Let this play out.” </p><p> </p><p>The he moves away from his brother, stepping towards the gate that keeps you enclosed and waits for Jacob to unlock it. </p><p> </p><p>He steps inside your crate and crosses the five steps it takes to get to where you lay, shucked up against the opposite wall. He crouches down, so he is just above eye level and reaches for you. He holds your face in his hands, his skin pulling at the deepening stubble on your cheeks and tilts your head up, until you are looking him unsteadily in the eye. </p><p> </p><p>“Hello, Deputy Rook,” Joseph says, then pulls your attention down to the tattoo on his forearm with a word and a tilt of your head. Your body he has as a captive audience for a story that has gone bland in the retelling, your attention has long since wandered off into the foggy valley of fatigue. </p><p> </p><p>The Father leaves you after a time, aware of the fogginess in your eyes, and the muted reaction to his words. He says something quiet to his brother and then disappeared down the row of cages and out of sight. </p><p> </p><p>Jacob stays in the open doorway of your cage and stares at you, eyes hard and mouth pulled tight and angry against his teeth. After a moment he shuts the door, locks it, and walks away. </p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>The next time you wake up, there is a bottle of water and a small bowl of gruel waiting for you.</p><p> </p><p>And then there is <em>only you.</em></p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>Wake up at the bottom of the Devil's Drop and force yourself to stand on quaking legs and stumble, zombie like, to the closest bunker you know of.  Lift the heavy hatch and take your first step down the narrow ladder into the hole. Miss the fourth rung when your ankle gives way and plummet the rest of the way down. Crash hard against the concrete floor and feel something in your knee snap. It sounds off like a gunshot in the underground room before your scream follows. </p><p> </p><p>Cry out, and curl into yourself, hand flying to pull your thigh to your chest, and writhe. </p><p> </p><p>Choke out sobs as tears crawl down your face and try to catch your breath against the heaving gasps that tear through you.</p><p> </p><p>Awareness flickers as your eyesight blacks out, and you come to consciousness limp on cold concrete. Your injured knee throbbing and immobile down to the foot. Raise your head enough to peer through the bunker, locate the ubiquitous plastic shelving, and roll carefully to your stomach, swearing against the pain that bursts through you, and start a slow and agonizing army crawl to it. Kneel as best you can on one knee and stretch for the portable radio you saw hidden high up on the second to last shelf. Catch it barely with the tips of your fingers and collapse back to the ground. </p><p> </p><p>Vomit and shake when the motion jostles your leg and fall hard into your own sick when your elbow collapses during a particularly violent spasm. </p><p> </p><p>You find yourself sick again when disgust overtakes you and shudder against the growing pile of acid and dark chunks of stomach lining that pass your lips. Roll away and fetch up against the nearest wall. Spit out what little saliva you can muster to your mouth and raise the radio to your lips, praying to whatever god is out there that the thing has working batteries. </p><p> </p><p>Speak into the open channel and plead for someone to come and get you. Rasp out again and again until your eyes start to darken at the edges, and your consciousness is swiftly pulled under. </p><p> </p><p>Feel the hand on your shoulder before you hear the worried rapid fire ‘Oh, shit, shit shit.” </p><p> </p><p>The hands move to your neck, press thick fingers under your jaw and feel around for a pulse. Swallow hard and drag your eyelids open long enough to see blur of red and pale skin. </p><p> </p><p>“Heeeey, Dep, you’re alive! That’s good, man.” Hurk chirps in your ear, his smile a flash of white in your eyes before the lids flutter shut. “You’re all good now, Bromigo. I’ve got you covered.”</p><p> </p><p>“Fucked m’ knee up.” You slur, shuddering against his hands as they wander over your body, at the little sparks of pain they cause when they hit bruising. </p><p> </p><p>There is a clinical surety to Hurk’s motions that you don’t expect. A deftness when he cuts your pant leg off at mid thigh and palpates the skin about your knee. </p><p> </p><p>“I think you dislocated this, Dep.” he says as he gently feels for the location of your kneecap. “Saw this before, in Kyrat. One of the Golden Path members fell down a cliff side, popped their leg like a spatchcocked chicken. It was gross.”</p><p> </p><p>“Don’t tell me that.” You moan and try to yank away from his probing fingers, but he holds you still with a heavy elbow on your thigh.</p><p> </p><p>“Gonna immobilize this and bring you back to Fort Drubman, okay? Call in Doc Lindsay to set this right.” Hurk squeezes your hand before shoving himself to his feet and wandering back into the bunker. </p><p> </p><p>He comes back moments later with a wooden broom handle and a roll of duct tape. You can’t hold back the pained cries that jerk from your lips as he does what’s necessary, nor the agonized groans that come when he pulls you onto his back and struggles up the ladder with you clinging like a limpet with your one good leg and weakening arms. </p><p> </p><p>Pass out around the time he pulls you into the back seat of his daddy’s campaign vehicle and don’t wake up for three more days.</p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>Come to in a room that is barely lit by the rising sun. Peel open your eyelids and move your blurry vision over to the snoring form of Hurk, passed out on the pillow next to you, but otherwise hurt-free. </p><p> </p><p>Slowly roll your head to the other side and catch sight of light blue walls covered in thick swaths of memorabilia. There are thick hempen bags stamped with unknown logos and names of far off places, battered and creased travel posters, and mass printed wanted posters from foreign countries bearing Hurk’s face and numbers with growing amounts of zeros after them. The newest ones are familiar to you, printed by the Seeds and plastered over every immobile surface in the county. All your friends have gotten them, all with various values and Hurk seems to have collected them all, placing your squad’s photos around the wall, as if to orbit the shrine to the Monkey God he has set up below them. </p><p> </p><p>Each photo has a pushpin beside it, hung with little handmade fetishes. Nick’s is a collection of bird feathers strung around a keychain with an airplane. Grace’s a shell from her sniper rifle and tags of paper with words scrawled in ink down their length. </p><p> </p><p>Your own seems the most elaborate. Something like a dream catcher strung messily, around the rim of a embroiders loop. Little charms dangle from colorful yarn, a string of bullet casings, another with feathers tied to little snippets of antler, capped with a cougars claw dangling from the bottom. Another string has wishbones, a rabbit’s foot keychain, and a plastic four leaf clover, but the majority are wrapped around rolls of bandages, and tubes of antibiotic cream, and empty orange pill bottles. </p><p> </p><p>Blink mildly at it, find yourself amused by the artistry, and more than a little touched at the obvious care and effort that went into each token. Reach for his hand, resting under the blankets near your own and lace your fingers together. Turn your head so you can catch sight of your friend and find Hurk staring at you with half lidded eyes. </p><p> </p><p>“Hey, man.” He says quietly, squeezing your fingers gently. </p><p> </p><p>“Hey, Hurk.” You sigh back, “Thanks for—“ and you wave your hand around the room hoping to encompass <em>getting my ass to safety, putting up with me, taking care of me, having my fucking back. </em></p><p> </p><p>And he just nods at you, smile spreading across his face. ‘Cause Hurk gets it, he always gets it, gets the quiet of your inferred conversation better than most people ever do in your life.</p><p> </p><p>Your friend sits up slowly, pulling down his shirt where is crept up his stomach in the night. He motions to his wall, the one you had been viewing like an art gallery from afar. </p><p> </p><p>“They had these things in Kyrat. Big carved wooden totem thingies that would spin round and round if you touched them. People there believe you can use them to gather good luck, karma, y’know? I thought we could use something like that too, but I’m not much of one for carving sooo.” He shrugs and gestures at the wall. </p><p> </p><p>Smile genuinely and press your fist against his leg. “Thanks, man.”</p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>Doc Lindsay has kicked Hurk out of the room and is sitting on the edge of the bed, your good leg pressed along his thigh as he leans over and massages your injured knee between his hands. Grit your teeth against the urge to cry out and press your hand over your lips to hide it. </p><p> </p><p>Doc Lindsay still cuts his eyes to you and winces in sympathy. “The joint’s taken reduction well,- getting put back into place, I mean.” He says as he catches your eye. “Swelling’s gone down some, but you still need more time on bedrest, elevate the joint, lots of ice… then maybe…” </p><p> </p><p>He frowns and sighs out, running a hand through his short cropped hair. “Dislocated knees are no joke, Deputy. Without an MRI or X-ray, there’s no telling if you damaged ligaments or tendons, and I mean, I can't do anything about it if you did anyway. Vet degree doesn’t translate well to humans, especially for something as serious as this. </p><p> </p><p>Swallow the frog that’s been growing in your throat. “How--how long?” </p><p> </p><p>Lindsay turns to you, hand pressing against your shoulder gently. “Dep, I can’t tell you, honestly, I don’t know, but injuries like this, they take months, even close to a year to recover from. This kind of injury takes bedrest and surgery and physical therapy…if you push this too soon, it can cripple you.” </p><p> </p><p>“So you just gotta… you have to call it quits, Dep, until we can get you to real doctor okay?”</p><p> </p><p>Press you hands over your eyes and swear.</p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>Doc Lindsay leaves you with a steroid shot to help reduce the swelling and a mostly empty bottle of Oxy. There are eight pills sitting in the clear orange container and you have been left with directions to split them in half and baby your pain for the next few days with half doses every 12 hours. </p><p> </p><p>Wait instead for Hurk to leave to take a shower and swallow those little round pills down with a gulp of lukewarm water.  </p><p> </p><p>Close your eyes and let the drugs pull you away.</p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>Wake up, and you are in Hurk’s bedroom, stretched out on his bed with pillows propping up your knee, and your leg swaddled in ice packs. </p><p> </p><p>Blink once and </p><p> </p><p>Wake up and you are in the bunker, Hurk is huddled over you hand pressing tight against your shoulder as he tries to unfold you away from the death grip you have on your leg to better assess the wound.</p><p> </p><p>Blink again and</p><p> </p><p>You’re at the bottom of the Devil's Drop, face down in a cooling pile of congealing blood and limp bodies. Choke on the vomit that rises in your throat and squeeze your eyes shut as you</p><p> </p><p>Wake up and whisper “what the fuck” to the cold, empty air of your cage. Face pressed into black moldering straw and your stomach making a meal of your lungs. </p><p> </p><p>Stumble your way to your feet and make the short five steps by five steps walk around the perimeter of your cage. Ignore the snarling Judges, and the emptily staring eyes of the other humans. </p><p> </p><p>Wrap your arms around your too skinny chest and lock your limbs down tight, as if you can force away the shakes that have overtaken your frame by will alone. </p><p> </p><p>Walk around and around your cage until your legs are quivering with fatigue and your lungs struggle to force air through your parched esophagus. Sink down against the far wall and wait. Wait for a day, and then another, and finally, finally Josephs appears.</p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>Head for the Wolf’s Den the next time you are dropped off of the scenic overlook, stumble your way over miles and miles of unclaimed forest with nothing to your name but the ragged clothing on your back and a heavy branch you pulled from a fallen pine. </p><p> </p><p>Bang on the thick metal of the bunker door nearly a full day after you were released from Jacob’s clutches and let your mind disassociate as you lean against the cool metal until a voice calling out from the speaker with increasing agitation breaks you out of your stupor.</p><p> </p><p>“Yes! Sorry, I’m here. It’s Deputy Rook, I need--help? Please?”</p><p> </p><p>“Jesus Christ.” You recognize Tammy’s voice over the intercom now. </p><p> </p><p>“I-I didn’t lead them here, I promise. I was careful, I-I just...water please? And a radio, and I…”</p><p> </p><p>And you can hear the tumblers turning on the other side of the door, the movie sound effect clang of a bank vault, and you stumble away from the door as it swings out and open. </p><p> </p><p>Tammy is on the other side, frowning and vicious in her cardigan sweater, and grief lined face.</p><p> </p><p>“Get in here.” She barks and you do.</p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>The Whitetail’s medic checks you over while Eli looks on. The militia man stands patiently by the foot of your cot as the medic sticks you with IV bags and watches you chug a Gatorade. </p><p> </p><p>“We didn’t know you were coming back to the mountains.” Eli says quietly, watching you with those soft, caretaker’s eyes of his. “I would have sent some patrols out to help watch your back, with two of the Seed siblings dead...Jacob’s gotta be pissed.”</p><p> </p><p>Nod in agreement because yeah, he was pissed. He was pissed, and you’ve lost seventy five pounds in eleven days, and you’re nearing levels of thin that Jacob forced upon you when he <em>had</em> you. Levels of thin that make your bones look bird like and your hands skeletal, that makes your face gaunt and sit tight against your skull.</p><p> </p><p>“Yeah.” You say, because you have to say something, “His outpost are they still...?”</p><p> </p><p>“The cult took back the Breakaway Camp and the Radar Station. We managed to keep a hold of the F.A.N.G. Center and the Lumber Mill. Two of the wolf beacons have been replaced, near enough to their original locations.”</p><p> </p><p>Eli sighs and rubs a hand across his eyes. “It’s an uphill battle. New recruits have been trickling in from Faith’s Region, the bulk of her surviving followers are bolstering Jacob’s forces. There’s more Bliss in the area than ever before, but it’s concentrated towards the edges of the park.” </p><p> </p><p>“I’ll call my people, we can--“ you start to say but a sharp look cuts you off.</p><p> </p><p>“No, Rook. You’re going to rest up. You’re going to hydrate, and sleep and eat a few fucking meals, and when you look less like death warmed over then we can talk about <em>what you can do</em>, okay?”</p><p> </p><p>It is a sentence with a question mark, but Eli does not mean for it to be taken as anything but an order. </p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>You stay in the Whitetail’s medical wing for fifteen days, their doctor slowly introducing your body to bland easy to digest foods then working your way up to the prepacked MRE’s that both sides of the war seem to exist on in these parts. They take you off the IV drip after three days and shove freshly filled water bottles at you whenever yours goes empty. </p><p> </p><p>It is terribly terribly boring, even with a steady stream of visitors flitting in and out. </p><p> </p><p>Hurk visits you the most often, his home being relatively close by, Wheaty a close second, because he’s learned you can carry a tune and have a voice for classic rock. He brings his guitar and fiddles on the strings while you deny and deny and deny that you’ll sing, but always end up giving in under the force of his puppy dog eyes, and Tammy’s murder stare from where she watches you from the open doorway. </p><p> </p><p>Slowly graduate to real food, to monitored walks around the bunker, and even to drinking coffee and plotting courses of action with Eli in his situation room. Gain some healthy fat but fail to do more than maintain the muscle mass you have left. Feel undersized in the clothes Grace brings from your apartment, and downright small when standing beside Hurk for all that you have an extra three inches on him. Force a smile to your face and pretend your friend’s well meaning jokes don’t ruin you.</p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>Take Grace and Jess to reclaim the Breakaway Camp, and hold Hurk in reserve to help blow the place once you’ve taken out the opposition. For a place swarming with Judges and their handlers, it is beyond easy to swoop in undetected, with the quiet swoosh of your and Jess’s arrows, and the muffled bang of Grace’s sniper. </p><p> </p><p>Give the place a once over and search for Doctor Perkins, but find no evidence of her inhabiting the place for a good long while before radioing Hurk in to help set up demolition charges. </p><p> </p><p>Lace the entire facility with C4 and fall back to watch the fireworks. </p><p> </p><p>“That’s the prettiest goddamn thing,” Jess says, once a ball of fire and wooden shrapnel combusts into the sky. “Honest to God, I’ve gotten kind of horny just looking at it.” </p><p> </p><p>Grace snorts and swipes the younger woman into a headlock. She places her balled hand on Jess’s hood and gives her a noogie through the fabric. “Leave that talk for the real soldiers, you hear? What would your Uncle say?”</p><p> </p><p>Jess snorts and blows a raspberry. “Are you kidding? He’d have a stiffie too.” </p><p> </p><p>Shake your head and lead them back through the woods to where you know a newly rebuilt wolf beacon is hiding.</p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>You have been active in the Whitetails for nearly a week, and with each passing hour, you become more and more of a nervous wreck. </p><p> </p><p>You have never made it this far into Jacob’s territory, never managed to destroy all his Wolf Beacons, or take over nearly all of his outposts. You have never gotten so deep into his operation as to cause actual, lasting trouble, not like now, not like you have today. </p><p> </p><p>Your success in taking back the Whitetail’s Ranger Station, leaves you a shaking mess, fidgety and flighty even with Grace’s calming presence at your back, and Sharky’s cheerful ribbing over a long range radio as he burns his way through fields of Bliss flowers in the Henbane. </p><p> </p><p>“Goddamn,” Sharky says, his voice rough with a mess of static, “this shit grows like weeds. Can you imagine what this would have been like if we left it to seed again next year? Jesus!”</p><p> </p><p>“Not enough Roundup in the world.” Grace chimes back, while scraping a bit of grime from the bolt action of her sniper. </p><p> </p><p>“Damn straight, Chika,” Sharky laughs.</p><p> </p><p>You toss Grace a cartridge of rounds for her holdout pistol then tap your thigh to gain Boomer’s attention, the dog perking up and tramping over to you with his tail a waving banner. </p><p> </p><p>He schmoozes you for pets, which you dole out before tipping your head to the door and leading Grace outside the Ranger Outpost. </p><p> </p><p>Give a quick scan of the fleet of vehicles and tip your head toward one of the Peggie trucks, a dark grey number with an auto turret that Jacob’s people seem to prefer. </p><p> </p><p>“I’ll take gunner then,” Grace gives a put upon sigh, but you know she secretly enjoys that position, a little tidbit of her army life that she rarely got to use while deployed, but takes pleasure in now. </p><p> </p><p>Offer her a hand up into the turret with a bow, “Your throne awaits, my queen.”</p><p> </p><p>She snorts but takes you up on your offer, and you guide her into her spot with an appropriate among of fawning before opening the driver’s side door for Boomer to jump inside following right after him.</p><p> </p><p>You drive carefully down the gravel path that leads from the ranger’s outpost to the main drag, then gun the engine with a whoop, making for the bridge that separates the Whitetails from Holland Valley and enjoy the drive.</p><p> </p><p>You’re taking the last switchback curve down the mountain that would drop you onto the main loop that runs around the whole park when the road blows up before you.</p><p> </p><p>A flash of fire and your truck is airborne, is flipping, then sliding, then rolling, rolling, rolling, into a copse of pines with an apocalyptic crunch. Hang upside down with your seat belt cutting into your screaming ribs. Smash your hand into the release mechanism, once ,twice, then fall to the roof, your neck and shoulders smashing against the padded metal before gravity asserts itself over the rest of you and yanks your legs down after. </p><p> </p><p>Lay there and wheeze, your eyes flooding with creeping black, ears ringing. Flinch as the shattered glass of the driver’s side window is kicked in and hands reach through to pull you out. Scrape your back and arms on the way out and feel the blood flow. </p><p> </p><p>Those same hands throw you to the ground and wrench your arms backwards, cuffing them tight with zip ties and your ankles with duct tape. </p><p> </p><p>Cry out for Grace when the Peggie’s heave you up, heave you back, and toward one of their transports. Struggle as best you can, but fail and fail again. You never hear Grace’s voice, and you never catch sight of your dog. </p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>Jacob doesn’t bother starving you this time, just orders you strapped to a chair in a small, empty, concrete room. He leaves you there for hours, until the blood scabs around the glass shards in your arms and back and cheek, until you are miserable and vicious with the pain. He leave you until you have lost control of your bladder and pissed yourself. Until you have stopped your snarling, and screaming, and threatening, and wait for him in exhausted and beaten silence. </p><p> </p><p>He comes for you when you have succumbed to fatigue and have fallen forward in your bindings in restless sleep. He wakes you by grabbing hold of your torn up arm and squeezing until the imbedded glass shards cut deeper, until you are screaming and struggling futiley to get away, from the pain, from the sudden numbnesss in your arm, from fucking Jacob Seed.</p><p> </p><p>“You know what I find fascinating, Deputy?” Jacob asks as he wipes his hand on your shirt, “is that after all this time, after all that you’ve been through, that’s been done to you, that you keep coming <em>back.”</em>  </p><p> </p><p>He stands up and steps in front of you, assuming that same patronizing stance he would take in the <em>room</em>, all tall and broad and fucking powerful, with his feet spread and head tilted to the side condescendingly. “They say it’s the first sign of insanity, you know. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”</p><p> </p><p>“Kind of like you?” You wheeze out, because you never were smart enough to leave things alone.</p><p> </p><p>Jacob just grins at you slowly, and pulls one of his music boxes out from a pant pocket. He taps the lid with the fingers of his free hand. “You’re familiar with their term ‘classical conditioning’, right, Deputy?”</p><p> </p><p>And oh, it’s this speech. It shocks you a little that Seed would pull it out now, in such a different scenario than your last experience. </p><p> </p><p>“Of course you do, college boy like yourself, I’m sure you’ve cottoned on to what I’m doing here. Repetition yes, but I hardly expect different results.  I play my song, and eventually it leads to a reflexive response. In this case, to train, to kill, to sacrifice. And in the end I get exactly what I want.” </p><p> </p><p>“And what is it you want?” You ask, because Jacob’s got a villain monologue going, and honestly who are you to stop him?</p><p> </p><p>He just shakes his head at you, and turns the crank on his music box. “It’s not about what I want Deputy. The Father has spoken and so shall it be. But even then, the weak have their purpose. You'll see, soon enough.”</p><p> </p><p>He lifts the lid of the music box with one finger and you see a smirk flit across his face as your vision floods red and your consciousness crumbles.</p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>You run Jacob’s maze, again and again and again. Glass shards digging deeper into your muscles with each iteration, you can barely move without leaving a track of blood behind you. </p><p> </p><p>You pass out that final run, in the courtyard with the fountain and the studio backlight in fire. Crash hard onto concrete, and the sub machine gun clatters from your hand, skittering away from your fingers, and coming to rest against a concrete barricade.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>For it's true, you are my destiny</em>
</p><p> </p><p>The Platters tell you, and your body rages to respond, but your muscles just twitch and spasm against the flood of adrenaline, and you are gasping for breath, and you are shaking so hard you’re near seizing. Then you are, you are seizing, muscles locking, you flail and shudder and choke on your own spit until your eyes roll back into your head, and you lose track of </p><p> </p><p>everything. </p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>Wake up in a cage, wrapped tight in bandages, track a needle in your arm to an IV drip, to a bag of saline and another of blood. Shudder weakly at the sight of it. Hope deeply that Jacob’s people have followed safety guidelines regarding blood collection, that its been tested, and that you’re not going to get some bloodborne pathogen. You hope that it's actually your blood type, and you won’t die of transfusion rejection, that you won't become one of the ‘mistakes were made’ statistic so warned about during the EMT training you went through at police academy. </p><p> </p><p>Struggle weakly against the force of gravity, but give it up as a bad job and collapse. Wait there, blinking slowly, for sleep to overtake you, for the sun to rise, for the wolf in the cage beside you to stop growling. </p><p> </p><p>You end up waiting a long time, days in fact, filled with heavy protein shakes, and water bottles and endless fucking waiting, until one day, Staci Pratt walks by your cage and cuts his eyes over your body, snapping his head to look at you gob smacked. </p><p> </p><p>“R-Rook.” He stutters, flinches, and then cuts his eyes to where one of Jacob’s chosen is gathering their Judge for patrol. </p><p> </p><p>The man leaves and Pratt stutter steps towards your cage and looks down at you with wide eyes. Blink at him, and manage an exhausted flutter of your fingers before your hand drops back down to the metal floor and your torn muscles burn.</p><p> </p><p>Take a moment to gather enough wetness in your mouth to talk and grit out a “Hey, Stace.” That has your old coworker close to tears.</p><p> </p><p>“You-you’ve…” he clenches his teeth and crouches down beside you, his hands clutching at the bars of your cage so hard the blood in his knuckles drains free, and his fingers show white. “You’ve got to be strong, okay. You have to! Don’t let them kill you, you have to be better!’ He snarls at you before shoving upright and quickly striding away, down the row of cages and out of sight. </p><p> </p><p>Squeeze your eyes together and swallow thickly. You’ve made it this far. You’ve made it so far, but you’re terrified that you won't be going on much longer. </p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>Some of Jacob’s people remove you from the cage not long after, shove you into the small wooden holding crate they use between trials, and queue up the song. It comes on quietly, then gains volume as they ease you into the berserker state. </p><p> </p><p>Your vision goes red, your blood thumps with adrenaline, your hands begin to shake and sweat pours from your hairline. </p><p> </p><p>The song is loud, is disjointed, is crooning like a fucking demon in your ear when the gate is yanked open and you are released into the first room. </p><p> </p><p>Ignore the pistol on its podium and take out the first two obstacles with your hands. Snap a neck and slam your fist into the other’s nose to take them to ground level, and tear into their throat with your fingers. Burst into action with a hand dripping blood and snatch up a shotgun waiting by the doorway.</p><p> </p><p>Find yourself surprised in a distant kind of way, because the weapon is out of its usual location, but don’t slow down, pump six shots into six bodies, and dump the gun for an assault rifle, kill kill killing your way through the maze, through the fire, through the danger, until you are bursting through the final room. You go until you are raising your gun, and pulling the trigger, and you are firing, firing firing, and everything stops. Everything is quiet. The song, the rage, the inferno inside you shuddering to a complete stop. </p><p> </p><p>This is not the maze. This is not a trial. That is Eli on the ground before you, blood covered from a hole in his chest, eyes blank and staring, mouth and beard stained with blood and oh god</p><p> </p><p>oh god</p><p> </p><p>oh god.</p><p> </p><p>Fall to your knees as Jacob’s voice comes out of the long range radio strapped to your arm.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“Well done, Deputy.”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>You are crying, full on sobbing, tears and snot and wheezing breaths that do nothing to alleviate the pain in your ribs, in your chest, in your lungs. </p><p> </p><p>Shudder and shake against the cold concrete in the room where Eli died, in the room where Tammy and Wheaty found you and fell upon you with vicious words and correct accusations. In the room where Wheaty turned a gun to your head and Tammy stopped him from pulling the trigger. Where they stand now arguing above you as you weep.</p><p> </p><p>Jacob’s voice is still waxing poetic over the radio, preaching about weakness, and culling, and well done, well done, well done.</p><p> </p><p>Tammy grabs you by the arm and heaves your body upwards onto unsteady feet. She shoves a rifle into your hands a tucks ammunition into the ragged waistband of your pants.</p><p> </p><p>“You started this. Now go finish it.” She orders and shoves you, sending you stumbling out and up the stairs, into a world that has gone dark with smoke curling off of trees of fire. </p><p> </p><p>Into a world of gunshots, and radio towers playing ‘Only You’ on full blast, and Peggies and Whitetails, where Whitetails that have turned into Peggies are killing each other under the weight of the song, of the conditioning. </p><p> </p><p>“<em>It’s about time you came out,” </em>Jacobs voice hisses out over the radio, “<em>Thought I was going to have to come get you.”</em></p><p> </p><p>A sniper round impacts the dirt at your feet, and you are rushing pellmel down the deer trail, tripping, and falling over yourself, over the fallen bodies of Peggies and militia, herded by bullets and Jacob’s voice into an open field. Until you catch a burst of red laser sights as they flash over your eyes, and it is only the quick lunge to the right that saves your head from becoming tomato paste. </p><p> </p><p>Scurrying, you take cover behind a chunk of granite, pop the clip out of your rife and do a quick inventory, and find yourself off far worse off than you expected, four rounds… you have miscounted your shots in the mad dash between the bunker and here. </p><p> </p><p>Breathe deep and pop your head above cover, eyes making quick work of sight lines and triangulating an approximation of where the bullet had come from. </p><p> </p><p>Duck down in time to narrowly miss another bullet, the metal round biting into the rock face and kicking up powder.</p><p> </p><p>“<em>Don't you find it ironic that everyone you try to help winds up worse off?,” </em>Jacob sneers, “<em>You think you’re playing hero, keeping them safe, but you’re just killing them sooner.”</em></p><p> </p><p>Break cover, make a mad dash for the cliff side you had targeted Jacob’s location at. Slide into safety beneath the sniper and gasp for breath.</p><p> </p><p>“<em>You should just kill yourself,” </em>Jacob continues, “<em>it’d be better for everyone.” </em></p><p> </p><p>Spit out a thick wad of phlegm that has gathered in your overworked lungs and try to push away the lactic acid burn of your muscles, the trembling, the fucking pain that moving has become. </p><p> </p><p>Scale up rock faces, slick mud slopes, and free climb up grapple points until you you can see the red tuft of his hair, until you can sneak up on level ground behind him and raise your gun to shoot, until you have him in your sight, in your trigger, and you pull.</p><p> </p><p>And the gun clicks. And clicks, and as Jacob turns to raise his sniper, you burst forward tackling him off the rock he had perched on, bringing him down to the ground and smashing the butt of your rifle into his face, slam your elbow into the stock of his own gun and send it off course. </p><p> </p><p>Crack your skulls together and fight over his gun like two feral dogs after a bone. Torque your body and rip it away from him. Trap him between your thighs and under your minuscule weight, and lean back far enough to get the long gun between you, to pull the fucking trigger. Pulverize his face with a 50 caliber bullet and fucking laugh until you are crying. Until you are sobbing wretchedly atop his body and feel as broken as his skull. </p><p> </p><p>Pull the bunker key from his neck and go to liberate it. </p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>Leave Pratt with what remains of  the Whitetail Militia. Dump Staci there and stay for Eli’s funeral, because you owe the man, and Tammy glares daggers when you try to sneak away.</p><p> </p><p>Once the pyre burns out and the weight of the stares on your back has grown too heavy and makes the skin along your spine crawl, you duck out, leaving with Jacob’s rifle and a truck you liberated from his bunker. </p><p> </p><p>Leave the Whitetails and swear you will never return. </p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>Drive back to Falls End and park outside your apartment door when the sun is breaking the horizon. Stand at your locked door and stare at it blindly. You have long since lost your own key, and the hidden key in the flower pot has gone missing. All you really really want is to go to sleep. </p><p> </p><p>Thump your head against the cool aluminum door and stand there. Raise your hand slowly to the doorbell and press the button, hoping that somehow, maybe, one of your friends has crashed here overnight, has taken the emergency key inside with them, has --</p><p> </p><p>You hear a click of the locking mechanism and stumble back in time for the door to swing open. Joey Hudson stares up at you with a face scrunched in irritation that falls slack at the sight of you.</p><p> </p><p>“Fuck, Rook.” She reaches for you, pulling you tight against her side and into the narrow entryway of your walk up. </p><p> </p><p>Let her walk you into your own living room and sit you down on your third hand sofa. Let her wet a cloth and draw it down your grime, and blood, and tear stained face. Let her cut your shirt from your body and pull your jeans down your legs, and all but stuff you into the shower. </p><p> </p><p>Stand under the lukewarm spray, head ducked and shoulders hunched to get under the nozzle and watch murky water run down the drain. Scrub yourself with shampoo you didn’t buy, and soap you never owned and watch as the water runs from dirt brown to bloodied pink. </p><p> </p><p>Wince as your fingers brush the weeks old trauma at your arms and back, and today's addition of a crushed finger and mottled bruising. </p><p> </p><p>Run fingers over a slim abdomen and gaunt cheeks, over too thin hands and dick that hasn’t responded favorably since… since Jacob… since <em>then</em>.</p><p> </p><p>Wrap yourself in a bath towel and then in sweatpants and a hoodie that hang on you like trash bags. Shy into the living room and let Joey force feed you Gatorade and chicken soup and cream of wheat, and the last scrapings of a tub of vanilla ice cream.</p><p> </p><p>Let her hold your hand, straightening out the broken finger and strapping it tight to an old finger splint of Sara’s.</p><p> </p><p>Let Joey hold you on the couch as you watch a movie neither of you pay attention to and fall asleep with her tight against your side.</p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>Hope County is tense with anticipation.</p><p> </p><p>You can hear your long range radio in the other room, the one Joey has stolen and been using to keep in contact with Whitehorse and Pratt and whoever the fuck else will respond to her voice over the airwaves.</p><p> </p><p>The air is tense. People are fit to burst with it. They are waiting on you, and they are waiting on Joseph.</p><p> </p><p>And they are going to wait a while longer.</p><p> </p><p>You are currently standing in your bathroom regarding your tub. The water in it steaming, murky with the amount of Epsom salt you have dissolved within. </p><p> </p><p>Your skin is already crawling in anticipation of the burn, of putting salt in your fucking wounds, but you need to draw out the remaining shards of glass, you need to get those fucking pebbles of agony out of your arms and back but you are hesitant to inflict that kind of pain. Are fucking scared of something you are so damn used to. </p><p> </p><p>“Get in the water, Rookie.” Joey sighs out your nickname from the other side of the bathroom door. “You’ll feel so much better after, I promise.”</p><p> </p><p>“I-if I don’t?”</p><p> </p><p>“Then I’ll come and shove you in, stupid.”</p><p> </p><p>Hunch in on yourself as you debate it, “Fine…” You step into the tub, pause there, then lower yourself down. Swear when the wound on your back touches water, snarl when you submerge your arms and shuffle around so you can fit your torso into the too short space. One leg kicked out over the porcelain side, the other propped against the tile wall of the shower.</p><p> </p><p>Hear Joey’s voice coming muffled through the water as she cracks the door open to better talk to you.</p><p> </p><p>“I’ve managed to track down Grace and Boomer. Got calls in early this morning while you were still asleep.”</p><p> </p><p>Grunt an inquiry at her, and tilt your head to better hear her over the slosh of water.</p><p> </p><p>“Jacob’s people had Grace for a while at the Hotel, but she got out after a day or two, when the Whitetail’s raided the place. Okay overall, no lasting damage, aside from some bad bruising from the crash. She’s back home now, babying the damages.”</p><p> </p><p>“Good,” you rasp out, “M’dog?”</p><p> </p><p>“Tracked Boomer down to the F.A.N.G. Center, made his way there after you got taken. Wade’s been looking after him, finally put all that animal knowledge to use. Boomer will be fine after the stitches come out, and a little R&amp;R.”</p><p> </p><p>“Good...heard from anyone else?”</p><p> </p><p>“Hm...well. Sharky’s been burning Bliss all around the Henbane, and Addie’s been keeping an eye on pockets of Peggies as they travel around the outskirts of Hope to get to John’s Bunker. Why the fuck didn’t you blow that one like the rest of them?” Hudson grouses then says,” Jess’s helping the Whitetail’s clean house, your bear is off with your dog, and who the fuck knows where that cougar is... OH! Kim radioed a few hours ago. Wanted you to stop by.”</p><p> </p><p>Sit up so fast that the water in the tub sloshes over the containing wall. “Wait, what did Kim want?”</p><p> </p><p>Which is how three hours later, one insane car ride under your belt, and a heart still racing in your chest, you become godfather to a terribly ugly newborn.</p><p> </p><p>“They always look like that.” Kim scolds you as you clutch the small, small form of Carmina Rye to your chest. </p><p> </p><p>“No, Kim! She’s perfect, honest, it's just ...”</p><p> </p><p>“She looks like a cherry red hobgoblin?” Nick cuts in as he pushes Kim’s wheelchair towards your waiting truck.</p><p> </p><p>“She does not!” Kim growls, “She looks like a baby, and babies don’t get cute for like two weeks after they’re born. So yeah, maybe she looks like a shriveled prune. But she’s my shriveled prune, goddamn it, and I did not spend fourteen hours in labor to hear it from you two schmucks!” </p><p> </p><p>“Sorry, Kim,” you two say in stereo then adding,</p><p> </p><p>“She’s wonderful.”</p><p> </p><p>“Perfect.”</p><p> </p><p>“An absolute peach.”</p><p> </p><p>“My hormones are raging.” Nick counters you, “I am bonding so hard to this prune of ours. Her fingers. I am wrapped around them.” </p><p> </p><p>Kim smacks at him over her shoulder, and you pull the door open to the passenger seat of your truck. You pass Nick the baby, then slide your hands under Kim’s legs and back and hoist her out of the chair into the seat. </p><p> </p><p>She presses a big wet smack of a kiss against the side of your face as you pull back and a blush floods to your face. “Thanks, Rook.”</p><p> </p><p>Drive them home as carefully as you know how. Help them inside, and then head back to your apartment where Joey waits for you wearing Sara’s old clothes, making breakfast from supplies she bought for your kitchen, and waiting for you so you don’t have to return home to an empty house.</p><p> </p><p>You have never felt so gifted with love before this morning. Hold the memory close, hold it dear. It’ll be the last bit of love’ll you ever have.</p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>Get dressed late into the afternoon, pulling on tactical gear, and a compression shirt, before topping it with a bullet proof vest and your multitude of holsters. Place Jacob’s sniper across your back, and a glock on your hip. Strap on grenades, and extra ammo, and sling an assault rifle across your chest. </p><p> </p><p>Hug Joey tight, pull her close and let her go. Drive your stolen cult truck to Dutch’s Island, then ditch it outside his bunker. Step inside long enough for him to place a firm hand on your shoulder and direct you to where he has a pontoon stashed for your use. </p><p> </p><p>“Good luck, kid.” He says as he sees you off. “Get this done.” </p><p> </p><p>Nod at him once firmly and step out into the fading light. Travel by foot to the far northern side of the island, then boat across the shallow stretch of river that separates Resistance land with the last remaining cult stronghold. </p><p> </p><p>Approach Joseph’s compound alone, and armed with the deaths of his siblings. Once, a long time ago, he called you the beast that rides the pale horse. It is time, you decide, for that prophesy to play out. It is time for Joseph to meet death. </p><p> </p><p>—————</p><p> </p><p>The cult compound is empty when you scout its perimeter through your binoculars. It unsettles you, how dead it looks without Chosen patrolling the walls, or activity within the buildings. It is silent aside from the distant chirping of birds. There are no barking dogs, no quiet murmur of conversation, or rumble of car engines. It is deathly still inside those high barbed wire walls. </p><p> </p><p>Breathe out slowly, and tuck away your binocs, sling Jacob’s sniper across your back and draw out the assault rifle. Carefully make your way down the hill and slide between an opening in the fence line where a guard post used to reside. </p><p> </p><p>Snatch at a sheet of paper that was left on the plywood desk and give it a quick read through. Orders to retreat to John’s bunker, to rendezvous with the remaining Eden’s Gate followers and await further orders.</p><p> </p><p>Convenient.</p><p> </p><p>Toss the paper to the ground and step quietly between houses until you have found the main street, until you have Joseph’s church in sight, until you are moving towards it steadily. Until you are reaching out for the white graffitied doors and are about to push them open, until they pull open of their own accord and Joseph stands perfectly placed between them.</p><p> </p><p>“So it has come to this.” He steps out into the fading light of the evening sun and you step back and back until you are down in the courtyard, and he is standing on the wooden stairs of his church, flanked by Bliss barrels and his madness.</p><p> </p><p>“You have broken the fifth seal, you have made Martyrs of my family. They were slain because of the word of God, because you had to interfere.” His mouth curls in agony, and his voice grows thick. “You have made a mess of things, Deputy Rook, just as I knew you would, but I hoped you wouldn’t. The devil has made a mess of you. You are but a hotbed of sin and villainy and...”</p><p> </p><p>He snarls and slashes his hand through the air. “God is watching us. He will judge us on what we choose in this moment. Come!” He says, and from the church stream familiar faces.There is Whitehorse, and Pratt and Joey, Nick, and Mary May, and Jerome, Traci and Tammy, and Wheaty, Jess, and Hurk, and <em>Grace</em>. </p><p> </p><p>Your friends, your family, come stumbling out of the church, bleeding Bliss fumes, and eyes clouded with the drug. They ring you and Joseph with a half circle, weapons held loosely in hand. </p><p> </p><p>“I told you that we were living in a world on the brink. Where every slight… every injustice… where every choice reveals our sins. And where have those sins led us? Your friends have been taken, and it’s your fault. Countless people have been killed, and it is your fault. The world is on fire, and it’s your fault!”</p><p> </p><p>His hands hook like talons by his side, and his accent has grown thick in his anger. He is spewing filth and southern invocation, and you are enthralled by it, by him, the pageantry of it all. You are enraptured, and you are furious. Furious that he would lay hands on your people, furious, that this far into the fight he still thinks he has the high ground, as if he was ever <em>right</em> in the first place about this fucking hell on earth his cult started. </p><p> </p><p>Joseph is still screaming at you,”Was it worth it!?” He asked, “Did your problems find themselves solved by a bullet? Haven’t you realized? Haven’t you seen? The foolish and wanton cruelty, the murder!” </p><p> </p><p>“I gave you a choice!” He snarls, “When you first came here, I gave you a choice to walk away. You chose not to. In the face of God, I am making you that offer one last time… Put down your guns. And you take your friends. You leave me my flock… and you go in peace.” </p><p> </p><p>“You know I can't do that.” You say across the chasm that divides you, three feet and a staircase, “You lay blame at my feet but you ignore your own sins. You think I would have chosen this path if it weren’t for you? You think I would have killed, <em>murdered</em> if it wasn’t <em>for <strong>you? </strong></em>For your fucking decisions, for your siblings? For the kidnapping, and drugging, and torture? <strong>YOU THINK I WOULD HAVE CHOSEN THIS!”</strong></p><p> </p><p>Snap your gun up and fire, catch him in the shoulder with a bullet before your friends unleash hell on you. Their bullets cutting into your skin, and dancing across your vision as you surge to the side, scrambling for cover. </p><p> </p><p>Their fire slams into the Bliss barrels outside the church and the liquid ignites like rocket fuel. The plastic barrels exploding outward, catching those standing nearby with shrapnel. </p><p> </p><p>You take a chunk to the face, the left side of your check splitting open from lip to the start of your ear. You can feel the air on your teeth, and blood waterfalls down your face onto your neck and shoulder. </p><p> </p><p>Spit blood and fire blindly over the top of the concrete barrier you take as cover. Shore yourself up against its side before you pop over, aiming low, hoping to take your friends out with leg shots, or debilitate them with broken ribs when your bullets slam into their tactical vests. </p><p> </p><p>Duck under cover when the return fire comes in heavy, snag a smoke grenade from your belt, and lob it into the main square. Wait for the smoke to hiss forth and charge from your hideyhole. Slam the stock of your rifle into Pratt’s head, and take Whitehorse down in a rolling tackle. Slam his head into the concrete drive and push off to parry Joey’s wild swing. Grab her by the forearm and toss her onto the ground with Pratt, where she will hopefully get tangled up in his flailing limbs. </p><p> </p><p>Snap out a few bullets towards Joseph, aiming to kill, but he ducks down behind cover and returns fire. Juke to the side and behind a chain link fence and slam right into Hurk who floors you with a punch. His fist catches you in the face, slams into the broken skin on your left side, send you reeling to collapse in the ground with an animal like keen. </p><p> </p><p>Scream into the dirt and raise your hands to cradle your face, your eyes flooding with tears. You can't move through the pain, have locked up under the agony of it, and Hurk just stands there, blinking slowly over you, face scrunching in confusion.</p><p> </p><p>“I-“ He starts to say, eyes blinking with increasing speed, until the haze clears from his vision, and he yelps when he sees you, crashes to his knees beside you, hands hovering around your neck and shoulders. “Oh fuck, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t-“</p><p> </p><p>A fucking arrow slams off the concrete by his head, and he yelps again swinging up his RPG and firing. There is a distant explosion and an angry scream that you recognize as Jess’s before his arms are around your shoulders, and Hurk heaves you to your feet. “Gotta get up, man. We gotta move!” </p><p> </p><p>Then he pushes you back behind the wooden wall of an outbuilding, and you hack up blood against the white painted wall. </p><p> </p><p>Hurk pokes his head out from behind cover and says, “Okay, okay, looks like we've got some people on our side too.”</p><p> </p><p>“Who?” You grit out, as you slam a new clip into your rifle.</p><p> </p><p>“Umm, Officer Friendly, and that one lady whose been living out of your place.” </p><p> </p><p>“I smashed them in the face, think that broke them out of the Biss Stupor.” You spit, “How did you—?”</p><p> </p><p>Hurk fires another round, and a distant building explodes in a heap of smoke and wooden splinters. “Man, I just fucking heard you crying there, saddest damn sound. And it was like, like I knew you weren’t the one I was supposed to be hurting, y’know?” </p><p> </p><p>Grunt in acknowledgment and slide around him, fire at Grace’s position to keep her head down then vault over it and catch her face with your open palm and slam her head back against her cover. Remain crouched at her side until she blinks up at you and swears.</p><p> </p><p>“Head trauma.” You spit through the blood in your mouth and take off to try and win back the rest of your family. </p><p> </p><p>Catch a bullet with your vest just as you pull the last of your friends from the Bliss. Stumble forward, tripping over Tammy, who you just walloped in the temple with your fist, and slam into the ground.</p><p> </p><p>Roll away from the hail of bullets that follows and pull yourself behind a storage shed in time to hear Whitehorse call out.</p><p> </p><p>“Give it up, Joseph! We have you surrounded, you can't fight this!”</p><p> </p><p>“No, no, it’s you who’s too late.” Joseph says, his hands loose around the gun in his hands, eye turned unerringly towards you, “You would rather watch the world suffer and burn then swallow your pride. ‘And the Lamb broke the sixth seal and lo, there was a great earthquake… The sun became black and the moon turned to blood…’”</p><p> </p><p>He raises his hand and points across the lake, to where you can see a tail of white steam through the sky, like a plane writing in the atmosphere. </p><p> </p><p>Joseph drops the gun to the side and steps forward, hands out before him. “Forgive them Father… they know not what they do…"</p><p> </p><p>And he keeps talking, even as your friends step out from cover, as Pratt approaches him with handcuffs, as you press a hand to your cheek and stumble out towards them.</p><p> </p><p>‘‘When the Lamb opened the seventh seal… there was silence in Heaven… and the seven angels before God were given seven trumpets.. And there were noises, thunderings, lightnings, and an earthquake… and I heard a great voice from the temple say to the angels… go your ways… and pour from the vials, the wrath of God upon the Earth." </p><p> </p><p>And the sky lit up like fire, turned orange and green, and white, and settled on an ominous firestorm and a billowing white cloud, that you have only ever seen in children’s cartoons and old, old recordings.</p><p> </p><p>“It is finished, child.” Joseph says to you, and you can see the blue of his eyes aglow in the sudden orange light.</p><p> </p><p>And there is screaming, and running, and there is a voice in your ear that keeps shrieking, “No! No!” And you are in the driver's seat of a truck, and you are driving. Why are you driving? You can hardly fucking see through the blackness of blood loss and shock, and Whitehorse is in the seat beside you, screaming in your ear, and Joey is in the one behind you, and her hands are tight on the headrest, her fingers cold against your skin, and Pratt is crying in the backseat, stuttering out broken verses of the Hail Mary in increasingly loud voice, and Joseph Seed stares at you in the rear view mirror. He stares and he sings. And he sings sings sings sings. </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Amaaaazzzinng Graaaacee, how sweet the sound</em>
</p><p> </p><p>You are driving for Dutch’s. You are driving for Dutch’s, and the trees are disintegrating around you. The animals are bursting into fire in the air, birds fall like bombs on the roadway, cooked mid flight. The truck cab is a cacophony, is the only thing keeping you awake, keeping you functioning, keeping you</p><p> </p><p>Alive.</p><p> </p><p>There is a tree.</p><p> </p><p>There is a tree, and it is falling, it is falling in slow motion, and you are driving in slow motion, you can see the millisecond it hits the ground in front of your car, can count the time it takes to slam into it, to flip and crash, and roll and settle upright, truck hood planted against the trunk of another. </p><p> </p><p>Black out.</p><p> </p><p>Fall in and out of consciousness. Like you are in a room with a strobe light, you keep seeing scenes with missing pieces. </p><p> </p><p>You are dragged out of the driver's seat and pulled into a fireman’s carry across bare shoulders.</p><p> </p><p>You are brought to the door of the bunker, and you see Dutch’s worried face, feel his hand press momentarily against your head.</p><p> </p><p>Then you are dumped onto the cold concrete, and suddenly Dutch is there with you, eyes wide and blank, staring dead with blood gathering beneath his face. </p><p> </p><p>You are yanked with difficulty into another room, blood streaking the floor beneath you, stiff cuffs settle onto your wrist, and you are pushed up against the cold metal legs of a cot, your arm woven through the empty space that makes up the foot board and the cuffs complete the circuit. </p><p> </p><p>With great difficulty you manage to tilt your head up, to blink awareness into your vision, long enough to see Joseph Seed. Bloodied and bruised, and mad with victory.</p><p> </p><p>He kneels before you, and his eyes bore into your own. </p><p> </p><p>“The world has been cleansed by God's righteous fire.” He says, voice thick with an emotion you cannot parse. “I was right! The Collapse has come. The known world is over, it is over…</p><p> </p><p>He grabs your hands with his, and you can feel him shaking, or no, that’s wrong, you are the one shaking, the one trembling uncontrollably.</p><p> </p><p>“I waited so long for the prophecy God whispered in my ear to be fulfilled… I prepared my family for this moment. And you took them from me. I should kill you for what you’ve done. But you’re all I have left.”</p><p> </p><p>His hands move from yours and cradle your jaw in his hands. Fingers placed carefully around the torn mess of the left side of your face.</p><p> </p><p>“And when this world is ready to be born anew, we will step into the light. I am your Father and you are my child. And together, we will march to Eden’s Gate.”</p><p> </p><p>He releases you then, and leans back on his heels, stretching his abdomen out and back, and he regards you like a bug under a microscope.</p><p> </p><p>“You’ve taken some wounds, my child. It’s time someone attended to them.” And he raises to his feet and stumbles out of the room and you are left with a growing sense of Deja Vu, one that settles rock like and heavy into your stomach. </p><p> </p><p>Draw yourself in, back against the wall, press against the bed, and tremble, shake and shiver and hyperventilate while the cuffs on your wrists click against the metal bed frame like drumroll. Struggle for breath as your vision tunnels down to pin pricks of light, and your ears slosh like the ocean. </p><p> </p><p>Pass out long before Joseph returns with a needle and dental floss. Pass out long before he douses your wounds in alcohol and stitches them shut with unpracticed hands. </p><p> </p><p>Mark this down as the first time he ruins your face. It won't be the last.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Please keep your eye out for Part 2, Crucible,</p><p>Please leave me a comment, because they do truly, help speed up my writing, and I dearly want to know what you think.</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Please leave a review!</p><p>Also I'd like to give a huge thanks to Liliandoh for being my beta. You've put up with my ignoring the rules of English for years, and have not only managed to set my thoughts into some semblance of order, but you still put up with me. And for that, my dear friend, I am immensely grateful.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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